Harbison is a historian of modern and contemporary art. She researches the relationships between art, media and politics, and the impact of images in circulation on our daily lives.
Harbison completed her PhD in 2015 at Goldsmiths where she was AHRC doctoral scholar. Her first monograph, Performing Image (MIT Press, 2019), addressed art's role in an age of technology capitalism and social media. She has also researched histories of independent film in the North of Ireland/ Northern Ireland since 1968, and regularly writes articles, programmes screenings and chairs events on the topic.
She is currently completing her second book, which explores the working life and cultural legacy of a female neon designer in Las Vegas in the 1950s (MUP, forthcoming). It was shortlisted for a Hay Festival Writers Award (2024). She was a 2024 writer-in-residence at Writing Downtown. She is a 2024 Eccles Fellow at the British Library and a 2024-5 Eadington Fellow at UNLV.
Academic qualifications
PhD (Art Theory), Goldsmiths, University of London 2015
MFA (Curating), Goldsmiths, University of London 2008
BA (History of Art and Architecture), Trinity College, Dublin 2004
Teaching and supervision
I teach critical studies and creative writing to students on the BA Fine Art Extension programme, and I supervise PhD students in a range of areas including histories of modern and contemporary art; histories of performance and moving image; complex located histories of art; post-colonial and anti-racist histories of art; art and creative writing.
Harbison has been publishing art criticism since 2004, writing about a range of artists working in new media, performance and moving image. She is interested in researching located art histories, feminist art histories, and alternative histories of the Spectacle.
Performing Image, Harbison’s first monograph, was published by the MIT Press in 2019. It considers what agency art might have in relation to social media, as identity performance and DIY video-making accelerates under technology capitalism. The book reflects on how artists have long combined performance and moving image to challenge viewers with analyses of works by Robert Rauschenberg, Yvonne Rainer, Lorraine O’Grady, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Leslie Thornton, Ericka Beckman, Shu Lea Cheang, Frances Stark, Mark Leckey, Cécile B Evans, Ligia Lewis, Wu Tsang, Every Ocean Hughes and Martine Syms.
In 2020, she was awarded a research fellowship by the Paul Mellon Centre to research independent and artists’ film made in Northern Ireland from 1968 to the post-Brexit present. The ongoing research examines successive waves filmmakers active over the past fifty years in relation to key political events and media histories, patterns of distribution within international contexts, and policies and instances of state censorship. Interviews with artists aim to track work filmed by and among communities during turbulent years. Parts of the research have been published in articles and book chapters, with other elements informing public talks, conference papers and museum events and screenings.
She is currently completing the manuscript of her second book, a study of a female sign designer in Las Vegas who was active from the 1950s and the women, entertainers, organisers and artists who came to work beneath them. It is a true story of night, light, women and power. Recent non-fiction writing has been shortlisted for the Hay Festival and Eccles Centre Writer's Award, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize (both 2024).
Harbison, Isobel. 2022. Whose time is it anyway? In: Christina Kennedy, ed. The Narrow Gate of the Here-and-Now - IMMA: 30 Years of the Global Contemporary. Dublin: Irish Museum of Modern Art, pp. 22-30. ISBN 9781909792272
Harbison, Isobel. 2022. NOT/ MY/ SCENE. In: Charles Asprey, ed. A.B. Real Life. London: Charles Asprey, pp. 34-39. ISBN 9781399924894
In 2020, Harbison launched, ‘Northern Ireland: Art, Media and Politics’ in association with the Research Programme’s MARS. Further research is supported by the Paul Mellon Centre (2020). Associated research on art and media was undertaken as Research Resident at the Rauschenberg Foundation, New York (2019) and as Eadington Fellow (2020) at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Harbison has worked as a curator with Hayward Gallery Touring, Tate Modern, Auto Italia, Chelsea Space, TBGS Dublin and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. She has spoken and chaired discussions at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, the National Gallery, the Contemporary Art Society, Hayward Gallery, Camden Arts Centre, Whitechapel Gallery, and the Swiss Institute, New York.
She has taught and lectured at the Royal Academy School, Royal College of Art, Slade School of Fine Art, Central St Martins, Arts University Bournemouth, in Ireland at NCAD and IADT, and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Research projects
2022-2022:
Tapes Under The Bed A one-day international seminar comprising of talks, screenings and panel discussions exploring how to best preserve endangered film and video archives from the 1980s onwards.
Media engagements
2020:
Talk Show, Resonance FM Regular contributor to Art Monthly’s monthly live talk show on Resonance FM
Conferences and talks
2020:
National Gallery London In-conversation with Artist-in-Residence Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer
2019:
Trinity College Dublin No Longer Peripheral: Moving Image Culture (AEMI conference)
