From the original Festival website:

Amended and updated by John Byrne in January 2020.

Prior to his 2010 appearance at the NRLA in Glasgow John had begun a process, a kind of return to his performance roots, in which he explored the idea of investing belief in High Culture. That Art is somehow a route to Salvation. A substitute religion. He made two video / performance pieces, the first uses ‘art language’ in a prayer-like mantra in conversation with a reclining nude model. The latter, a performance in which he takes on the role of megaphone wielding, placard wearing preacher. The evangelising Christian message replaced with a convert’s call to the public to be ‘saved’ by an engagement with art criticism and theory. This journey advanced to his art service ‘Good Works’ (2012) complete with choral ‘art hymns’ composed by Byrne and sang by choirs accompanied by readings and performances including by fellow Irish Artists, Fergus Byrne and Brian Connolly. This was performed at the Cathedral in Cavan to a capacity congregation and subsequently to a large audience the chapel of the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

Belfast born Byrne lives and works in Dublin. He first practiced as a performer while attending the Slade in London in the mid eighties, appearing at his first National Review of Live Art in 1986. He subsequently went on to work with Irish comedian Kevin McAleer.  Returning to Ireland in 1996, he performed A Border Worrier for the 1997 Dublin Theatre Festival.  This apparent obsession with the Irish Border culminated in his Border Interpretative Centre (2000), a week long visitor centre project right on the Irish border. He has since made a number of video and public artworks, notably Dublin’s Last Supper (2004), Would you die for Ireland? (2002), Misneach (2010), and Peep (2016). He is currently working on a major public artwork for Fingal County Council (Dublin). John was elected to Aosdána in 2015.

john-byrne.ie