winner of the rds mason hayes & curran llp centre culturel irlandais residency award
Keara Simonsen
winner of the rds members ’ art fund award
Mary Madeleine McCarroll
winner of the rha graduate studio award
Sorcha Browning
winner of the taylor art trust award and rds & graphic studio dublin emerging visiting artist award
The RDS in partnership with the RHA Gallery presents an exhibition curated by Colin Martin.
The exhibition will run from Friday 22 November 2024 to Saturday 18 January 2025.
The RDS and the RHA would like to thank each of the artists for their vision and creativity. The exhibition is curated by invited artist and Head of RHA School, Colin Martin, supported by Karen Phillips, RDS Arts Programme Manager and Rebecca Kelly, RDS Arts Programme Executive.
2024 Exhibiting Artists
Heather Hughes
Cahal O’Connell / Miss Mary Jane
Fionn Timmins
Kyle Fairbanks
Stell De Burca
Mary Madeleine McCarroll
Keara Simonsen
Sorcha Browning
Ava Lowry
Claire Ritchie
2024 Judging Panel
Gary Coyle
NGI Nominated Judge, Professional Artist
Eithne Jordan
RHA Nominated Judge, Professional Artist
Janice Hough
IMMA Nominated Judge and IMMA Artists’ Residency Programme Co-ordinator
Colin Martin (Exhibition Curator) Head of the RHA School
Mary McCarthy (Panel Chair) Director of Crawford Art Gallery
2024 College Curators
Paul McAree Curator, Lismore Castle Arts
Rayne Booth Curator & Producer
Eamonn Maxwell Curator, Adviser & Mentor
Benjamin Stafford Visual Arts Curator, VISUAL Carlow
Sarah McAuliffe Curator, The National Gallery of Ireland
FLOORPLAN
foyer
CLAIRE RITCHIE
tony ryan gallery
KEARA SIMONSEN
SORCHA BROWNING
KYLE FAIRBANKS
STELL DE BURCA
Longlisted artists’ video
atrium
AVA LOWRY
CAHAL O’CONNELL / MISS MARY JANE
upstairs
FIONN TIMMINS
friends ’ room
HEATHER HUGHES
MARY MADELEINE McCARROLL
HEATHER HUGHES
MARY MADELEINE McCARROLL
AVA LOWRY
FIONN TIMMINS ← upstairs
KEARA SIMONSEN
SORCHA BROWNING
STELL DE BURCA
CAHAL O’CONNELL
KYLE FAIRBANKS
TONY RYAN GALLERY
FOYER
FRIENDS’ ROOM
ATRIUM
CLAIRE RITCHIE
LONGLISTED ARTISTS’ VIDEO
Welcome from the RDS
From Dr. Marie Bourke
Welcome to the 2024 Royal Dublin Society (RDS)
Visual Art Awards (VAA) exhibition, the most significant celebration of excellence for visual arts graduates in Ireland.
Since its foundation in 1731, the Royal Dublin Society has helped Ireland to thrive culturally and economically. Over the centuries the Society has been involved, directly or indirectly, in the establishment of many enterprises including, the National College of Art & Design (formerly RDS Drawing Schools), the Botanic Gardens, the National Museum, the National Library and the National Gallery of Ireland. Today the Society’s long-established reputation for fostering arts and culture is seen in the support it provides to emerging professional artists in the areas of Visual Art, Music and Craft. For example, the Visual Art Awards seek to find the best emerging artists among our graduates. To this end, the RDS Arts Programme, managed by a dedicated arts team, directs philanthropic support towards the most gifted practitioners so that they can develop their unique talents and achieve their creative potential.
The 9th RDS Visual Art Awards exhibition launches a new generation of artists into the professional art world providing vital support and exposure at a critical moment in their career, when the challenges facing an artist can seem both precarious and daunting. Assistance is provided when it is needed most.
Beneficiaries of the Taylor Art Trust Award (1860) include: Mary Swanzy, Walter Osborne, Mainie Jellett, Harry Clarke, Norah McGuinness, Dorothy Cross, Elaine Hoey and Taϊm Haimet. Delivering the Visual Art Awards sees the RDS Arts committee and Arts team working together to support emerging artistic talent, seek out new opportunities and develop partnership initiatives.
In 2024, the exhibition has the honour of being shown at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), which was founded in 1823. For over 200 years the RHA has championed the creative endeavour of Irish artists through its Academicians, the RHA School and, its exhibitions. It is in the august surroundings of the RHA Gallery the RDS VAA exhibition is showcasing new talent and revealing to the public what is urgent for artists working in Ireland today.
The VAA exhibition is drawn from an all-island selection process involving five independent curators: Paul McAree, Eamonn Maxwell, Rayne Booth, Sarah McAuliffe and Benjamin Stafford who, between April and June, visited BA and MA graduate shows across the country, north and south, selecting 120 artists on a longlist, who they considered exhibited highly accomplished work. To be chosen is in itself a great achievement! The graduates completed forms detailing their work, motivation and their future plans. The forms were reviewed by the judging panel: Mary McCarthy, Eithne Jordan, Colin Martin, Janice Hough and Gary Coyle, who produced a shortlist, evaluating the commitment of the graduates to their artistic practice and their ambition for a future career as visual artists. From the 56 shortlisted graduates, we send our congratulations to the 10 selected: Kyle Fairbanks, Fionn Timmins, Stell De Burca, Cathal O’Connell (Miss Mary Jane), Heather Hughes, Sorcha Browning, Claire Ritchie, Keara Simonsen, Mary Madeleine McCarroll and Ava Lowry. My sincere thanks to all the curators whose knowledge, skill and experience greatly enhances the prestige of the RDS Visual Art Awards.
The exhibition is curated by Colin Martin RHA, an acclaimed artist, Head of the RHA School and part-time lecturer in the NCAD Media Department. Colin is a contemporary artist whose practice explores spaces that blur boundaries between the real and virtual and where technology, culture and politics become synthesized. Colin worked closely with the Academy staff and the
by Dr. Marie Bourke,
“All
these awards benefit the artist by providing recognition within the arts world, giving validation to the artist and their work, and greatly enhancing the artist’s profile. ”
RDS Arts team on the installation of the artworks. The 10 emerging artists are fortunate to have their work displayed in the modern surroundings of the Royal Hibernian Academy. The RDS is immensely grateful to the curator Colin Martin, to Patrick Murphy, Gallery Director, Abigail O’Brien, RHA President, and to the wonderful RHA team.
A major feature of the RDS VAA project is the fund of over €40,000, from which six prize winners are awarded. For this we are indebted to the generosity of our sponsors and partners: the Taylor Art Trust, the family of Robin Lewis-Crosby, the RDS Member’s Arts Fund, Mason Hayes & Curran LLP, the RHA, and the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris. This year sees an additional Emerging Visiting Artist Award valued at €5,000 from Graphic Studio Dublin. The winner is offered a two-week residency with a Studio Master Printer, enabling the artist to explore the medium of printmaking as part of their emerging practice, and the opportunity to exhibit at the Studio’s bi-annual Visiting Artist exhibition. The winner will use the studio during the allocated times, where support will be provided in creating a series of two small or one medium original art fine art editions, printed by professional printers at Graphic Studio Dublin.
All these awards benefit the artist by providing recognition within the arts world, giving validation to the artist and their work, and greatly enhancing the
artist’s profile. This was confirmed by an independent review, commissioned by the RDS in 2021, demonstrating the effect the awards had on the careers of the contributing artists with over 50% having participated in 5 or more professional exhibitions, nationally / internationally, since the RDS VAA exhibition. The awards have, therefore, genuine impact in providing support at a critical juncture in the artist’s career by means of cash prizes and studio and art residency opportunities that are essential for an artist’s professional development.
I am most grateful to my colleagues on the RDS Arts Committee; to President John Dardis; Chief Executive Liam Kavanagh; Foundation Deputy Chief Executive Niamh de Loughry; Foundation Director Andrew Power and the Foundation Board; the RDS Board of Management and Council; members of the committees; fellow Society members and staff. My special thanks to the hardworking RDS Arts Team: Karen Phillips, Arts Programme Manager and Rebecca Kelly, Arts Executive.
Enjoy this thrilling exhibition.
Dr. Marie Bourke
(Chair, RDS Arts Committee)
Welcome from the RHA
From Patrick T. Murphy
The RHA are delighted to host, for the second time, the RDS Visual Art Awards, now in its 9th year in this current format. It seems a logical twinning that the Society moving towards its 300th anniversary in 2031 and the RHA just leaving its 200th year to join together to celebrate and promote the richness and ambition of the visual arts in Ireland.
The RDS Visual Art Awards exhibition offers the most comprehensive and inclusive showcase of the best graduating students from all art colleges on the island of Ireland. Co-opting the experience and depth of current curators in Irish and Northern Irish institutions these individuals are dispatched to review each art colleges final year exhibition to select a long list of prospective students for inclusion in this exhibition. The long list is reviewed by another coterie of curators which yields the final selection.
The individuals included in this exhibition are making a major transition from the nurturing and critical environment of art college to the harsh and demanding life of a professional artist. Their contribution here is a final lift-off into the tentative and little charted trajectory of a dedicated life-long practice of creating art. This exhibition offers an opportunity for support (financial and practical), confidence and exposure to these fledgling artists.
“The RDS Visual Art Awards exhibition offers the most comprehensive and inclusive showcase of the best graduating students from all art colleges on the island of Ireland.”
I would like to acknowledge the contribution of all of the curators involved in the selection process and to thank them for their time and expertise. Colin Martin, artist and RHA Head of School, has worked with the selected artists to craft an elegant installation of the final works in the demanding spaces of the RHA. And our gratitude to all of our colleagues at the RDS, Karen Phillips and her team, for their enthusiastic collaboration on all aspects of this important project.
Patrick T. Murphy (Director)
An Introduction
From Mary McCarthy (2024 Judging Panel Chair)
2024 RDS Visual Art Awards Judging Panel Members:
Colin Martin (Curator), Gary Coyle, Janice Hough, Eithne Jordan
As an external panel, we have had the honour of being involved for three years and have seen this programme thrive and remain deeply grateful to the RDS and the many sponsors for their long-term sustained commitment to this project.
The RDS Visual Art Awards, now in its 9th year has quickly established itself as a most relevant, desirable and highly competitive and valued support for visual art graduates In Ireland.
It offers a high-profile and comprehensively multi-layered assessment of undergraduate and postgraduate student work by curators and established practicing artists, on an all-Ireland basis. Significantly, it concludes with an exhibition of selected works in an established art space curated by a practising artist, in this instance by the esteemed artist Colin Martin. This whole process has many significant secondary benefits, as a large number of curators are exposed to work by a significant number of artists which may inform their ongoing research and artists are exposed to the often harsh realities of competitive selection.
The review process is one that is anticipated as it is energising and engaging — but we are also aware of the momentous opportunity that being in the exhibition may bring and what being an award recipient can be for an artist at this particular point in their working lives. As a panel, our work was driven by the desire to create opportunities and a platform that would reflect the breadth of practice across the colleges and to best present the artists’ works and their intent to the public.
The works presented for assessment were highly in tune with the environment, the state of the nation and the artists’ real-life experiences and concerns. They also in part reflected the influences of their various educational institutions, their place of study and their lecturers own practices and interests.
Artist and RDS Visual Art Awards 2024 exhibition curator Colin Martin has since had the challenge to work with the shortlisted artists and their individual practices to curate the work into the final exhibition at the RHA.
Though participation in the exhibition is a significant achievement in itself there is also the matter of the accompanying prizes — a total fund of over €40,000 consisting of the Taylor Art Trust Award (€10,000); the R.C. Lewis-Crosby Award (€5,000); the RDS Members’ Arts Fund Award (€5,000); the Centre Culturel Irlandaise in Paris, three-month residency with the support of Mason Hayes & Curran (total value €6,000); the RHA one-year studio award with access to all RHA masterclasses and workshops (value €5,000); a stipend of €2,500 generously sponsored by the RDS Members’ Arts Fund and the RDS & Graphic Studio Dublin Emerging Visual Artist Award (€5,500 value).
We wish to thank the curators who visited the colleges and longlisted the artists. Their attentiveness and considerable experience adds to the value and prestige of the awards. Thanks also to my fellow members of the Judging Panel: Eithne Jordan, Gary Coyle and Janice Hough and especially Colin Martin as curator.
Our most significant gratitude goes to all the artists who proposed their work in this first instance. The act of putting your work forward for multi-assessment by several individuals is never easy and can feel like a shot in the dark, a self-exposing act — but it is often a necessary step which will likely be repeated over and over again as you develop your practice.
We thank the Arts team at the RDS led by RDS Arts Programme Manager, Karen Phillips and Rebecca Kelly, RDS Arts Executive who make this project possible with the wider support of the RDS management and Board. Without their dutiful care this would not be the success it is and as a community we thank you for supporting us as a panel to do our work. We look forward to seeing the participant artist thrive into the future.
Mary McCarthy (Chair of the 2024 RDS Visual Art Awards Judging Panel and Director, Crawford Art Gallery)
All Schools Should Be Art Schools
Bob and Roberta Smith’s work All Schools Should be Art Schools (2013) consists of a protest placard with retro font text advocating the extension of creativity to all schools, no matter what they teach, like the hastily assembled slogans and signage that accompany any protest, the message is simple and direct.
Yet, when unpacked it points to many complex aspects of the art education system. At its heart, I believe it communicates a sentiment to celebrate and raise a flag for the often unseen work of art educators and art students and to shine a light on the role creativity and criticality have for our futures, in the context of a dominant knowledge-based economy and the information age.
What characterises the work of art schools and the ten graduates that will exhibit as part of the RDS VAAs 2024? Art schools are greenhouses for the protection and growth of pluralism and diversity, innovative material research, critical and radical thinking, attitude and position. Art students are rule breakers and do not always accept the status quo. Art schools are often bellwethers for societal change and progress. Art students extend boundaries and interrogate accepted narratives. If our future is to be founded upon a culture where all existing knowledge is available at a click and can be scraped and shaped by machine learning, what role do artists have to play in this unfolding narrative, it is clear to me that the cultural ruptures and
Curator’s Note by Colin Martin
artistic revolutions of the past such as Punk or Modernism came from a distinctly human perspective, one based on individual choice and reflective or revolutionary response, much of this innovative and expanded thinking has its origins in the art school.
What role does the curator have to play within this network? The curator as an art world figure has changed dramatically over recent history. They have been defined in many guises as a power broker, cultural DJ, surveyor, gatekeeper, tastemaker and author. In a culturally saturated world, the curator is often tasked with making organisational sense of the unruly directions and paths that art often takes. My own approach is closer to the idea of the ‘curate’ or the one who takes care. The curate then acts to shepherd the process of creating a group exhibition ecosystem, as work is transplanted from the greenhouse of the art school, to the garden of the gallery. Alongside the expertise of my fellow judges; Mary McCarthy, Janice Hough, Gary Coyle and Eithne Jordan, it was an intriguing and stimulating process to select from the depth and range of the 120 longlisted graduates to arrive at a point of collective wisdom. I felt it important to eschew any personal curatorial agenda and ‘listen to the grass grow’ in terms of what art graduates are saying and making at this time and how it gives meaning to the world in which we find ourselves. The work of the ten graduates that feature in this year’s RDS VAAs reflects many of the aforementioned characteristics of art schools, the work is diverse in approach and perspective and participating artists hail from Derry, Belfast, Dublin, Limerick and Cork, this rigorous curatorial process highlights what we share on this island, from the urban to the rural.
Claire Ritchie’s haptic intuition with humble materials draws upon aspects of Arte Povera and contemporary provisional painting in her assemblages that create new forms while being conscious of paintings’ previous contexts. Kyle Fairbanks builds a shonky sci-fi shebeen that nods to the world-building of film production and physically asserts itself in the space. Stell de Burca refers to comic book culture both in the classically heroic journey but also in comic culture as a bastion for the under-represented alternative voice, epitomised by figures such as Alison Bechdel, Daniel Clowes and Robert Crumb. Their
Curator’s Note by Colin Martin continued...
figurative paintings sensitively document a trans journey in serial form. Sorcha Browning’s film installation articulates a digital native’s perspective on finding oneself in a culture that is accepted and we are implicated in regardless of our critical position. Browning employs a digitised mise en scene reminiscent of filmmakers Jacques Tati or Wes Anderson, that wittily explores the dilemma of the digital cookie. This is offset by the abject actual form of a green screen doll. Keara Simonsen’s single-channel film Kapuluan is a meditation in critical nostalgia of how language can be used to both distance and connect. Simonsen explores these distances in slow cinema voice-over with a detached compassion and her personal quest to speak the elusive language, Filipino Tagalog, is layered and evocative.
Cahal O’Connell (AKA Miss Mary Jane) playfully reclaims unreconstructed cultures such as the Playboy bunny or country music and reappropriates them as a kind of hyper-femininity as a means to critique existing cultures. Ava Lowry situates herself within a genre canon of figurative painting specifically the oeuvre of female intimacy and the naked. Lowry subverts the historical male gaze on works that reclaim a subjective narrative in a world where historically, the stories are made and patronised by masculinity are reconsidered from a queer perspective. Heather Hughes explores the politics and power relations of digital spaces and refers to both the virtual space of the chat room and the actual space of a staged personal office or bedroom. Hughes explores the power relations in voyeurism in a technically innovative manner. Mary Madeleine McCarroll’s gesamkunstwerk employs performance, drawing, sculpture and digital film to explore the braided nature of her cultural heritage that is both Bahamian and Irish, two cultures that are post-colonial and how identity can be re-examined through the fetishisation of the ‘Douen’ a traditional Caribbean figure. Fionn Timmins monumental sculpture seems to reference a pre-Anthropocene age in a totemistic configuration that conjures a ritualistic primal form that draws upon ancient language that is adjacent to our own time.
To return to the original proposition of All Schools Should Be Art Schools, the RDS has generously resourced a process that shines a light on the sterling work done by both art graduates and art educators in an all-island process.
“Art schools are greenhouses for the protection and growth of pluralism and diversity, innovative material research, critical and radical thinking, attitude and position.”
The provision of venue and the fact that curators make pilgrimages to all corners of the island creates an invaluable conduit that can elevate and platform the exciting and relevant practices that are being made each year in art schools. We must remember that the period after graduation is when graduating artists may be at their strongest creatively but most vulnerable in terms of the support structures needed for an artist to thrive as they transition from full-time study to professional practice. The RDS strengthens and supports this fragile period for both artist and audience. It is worth noting as the RDS VAAs returns to the RHA as a venue, that the RHA established the first Irish art school that evolved into the Metropolitan School of Art, a precursor to our current National College of Art.
I would like to thank Karen Phillips and Rebecca Kelly for their continued professionalism and support. The technical team led by Damien Flood from Maurice Ward Art Handling. The RHA for providing the venue and platform. The RDS for their generous support of the arts and the ten brilliant artists I have had the privilege to work with on this year’s iteration of the RDS VAAs.
Colin
Martin (Artist and Head of RHA School)
Winner of the R.C. Lewis-Crosby Award
List of Works
Semi-Detached; Wrapping II; Wrapping, Wrapping, Wrapping I; Hides II, Eye Contact; Hides VI; Hides III.
Ava Lowry graduated from the TUS Limerick School of Art and Design in 2024. A visual artist, she specialises in paint.
Ava’s work explores the human body, physicality within relationships and the self, and the interplay between the corporeal body and the concept of ‘home,’ capturing an overarching sense of intimacy throughout. She considers these concepts primarily through the use and lens of nakedness, intending to pictorially reveal the internal, exposing private moments and delving into the details of an experience.
The pieces often work to describe the occasion when one thing or person interacts with another, at times examining an ‘after moment’ instead of the moment itself to encourage a sense of reflection. These queer, intimate and female-centric naked works aim to both work in and against the traditional nude genre and ideas of conventional viewership. Conveying identity and queerness, whilst questioning viewership, voyeurism and the male gaze.
Considering the perspective and experience of existing as a queer woman in the 21st century, Ava emphasizes the woman as an active and central component to the narrative of the work. By employing intimate obscured points of view, she hopes to challenge the way that nudes are traditionally consumed. While not overtly erotic or explicit, these works intend to exist as meditations of sweetness and eroticism combined, approaching queerness and the depiction of same-sex relations with a clear sense of normality.
The work employs domestic imagery and materials that indicate comfort, intimism and vulnerability counter to critiques of domestic trappings. Where domestic settings can exist as a stage for female oppression, in these works the objects act as a stage of female expression and exploration. She uses canvas and wood as a conduit for skin, as a material that absorbs and warps with experience, holding memory. She uses layers and washes of watercolour and oil that propose imagery of bodily fluids and stains.
Ava is motivated by the writings of Donald Kuspit, including ‘The Troubling Nude’ (1999) and ‘The Naked Truth’ (2001) and by the works of Jenny Saville, Lucian Freud, Kathy Prendergast, Amanda Ba and Maria Lassnig, in content and attitude towards paint and the body.
CAHAL O’CONNELL / MISS MARY JANE
List of Works
Bunny GoPro (2023); Miss Mary Jane — Rockstar (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO, 2024); Portrait Of A Bunny (2023).
Born in Derry City, Cahal began his journey as an artist at the North West Regional College, before progressing onto study at The Belfast School of Art at Ulster University, where he graduated in 2024 with a BA in Fine Art.
As a female presenting drag performer and a gay man, Cahal is fascinated by the complexities that exist within contemporary society regarding sexual expression, identity, gender, and visual iconography. Musical composition and producing has become a core component in Cahal’s creative practice. He draws on references from cinematography, pop-culture and music, producing and directing both lens-based and live performance pieces.
At the core of Cahal’s artistic practice is a deep connection to sexuality and sexual expression, which he analyses through the utilisation of his personal drag alias, Miss Mary Jane; his very own ‘Bunny Girl’. Examining the attitudes of the public to sexuality, gender identity and hyper-femininity, Cahal draws inspiration from the imagery and iconography of the Playboy empire. His body of work is a response to the world surrounding Miss Mary Jane and a reflection of Cahal’s own personal experiences as a performer and visual artist within the public sphere. This series is a documentation of public reaction to this highly sexualised, female presenting character being vulnerably transplanted into the reality and mundanity of everyday life.
CLAIRE RITCHIE
List of Works
1. Outlier (oil paint, plaster, reclaimed wood); 2. Sudden and Total (oil paint, canvas, reclaimed wood, sold, on loan); 3. Degraded (latex, acrylic paint, oil paint, reclaimed wood); 4. Fragment (paper, clay, reclaimed wood); Centre work 5. The Mutterer (mixed media, canvas, reclaimed wood); Work on right of central work Triptych, 6. Library of Dust (oil paint, reclaimed wood, canvas, found metal, fishing line, sold, on loan); Diptych 7. Tangible (oil paint, reclaimed wood, paper, found metal, fishing line).
Claire Ritchie graduated with a BA Honours in Fine Art from the Belfast School of Art, Ulster University, in 2024. Her practice is rooted in the expanded field of painting, where she explores the physicality of the medium and challenges traditional notions of how a painting can exist.
By incorporating reclaimed wood and found materials, each bearing the layered histories of their previous lives, Claire creates structures and wall-mounted assemblages that can push beyond the boundaries of twodimensionality. Through this process, the conventional materials of painting are unravelled, allowing the components to find a new existence.
By disrupting the traditional methodical approach to painting, she shifts the focus from the pictorial to the material essence of the work. Her paintings are pared down to minimalist compositions where irregular shapes, textures, materials, and colour become the central elements; the pictorial function of painting is abandoned in favour of an exploration of its “objectness.”
Destruction, collapse, reconstruction, and resilience are themes that she explores in her work. By using overlooked and discarded materials, she constructs assemblages that not only embody the cycles of decay and renewal, but also resonate with the complexities of the human experience. These works engage in a profound dialogue about the human condition and our inherent capacity for transformation and exploration that is deeply informed by her own journey as a mature student. This perspective brings a depth to her work, as her life experience enhances her understanding of these themes and their relevance to the process of personal and artistic growth.
FIONN TIMMINS
Instagram: @fionn.mac_tiomain
Winner of the RDS Mason Hayes & Curran LLP Centre Culturel Irlandais Residency Award
Ciorcal na nDéise
Fionn graduated from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design in 2024. He works primarily with sculpture, using video and sound to support his practice.
Fionn’s work considers our relationship with the landscape by addressing and reinterpreting references to Irish folklore and ancient Irish megalithic forms, including stone circles. Working primarily with ancient bog oak, a material that would have been alive in the landscape during the construction of these ancient sites, his sculptures draw on the symbolism of the circle and the Sacred Oak Tree, often referred to in Irish mythology.
During the Spring equinox in 2024, Fionn brought his bog oak sculpture, Ciorcal na nDéise, back to its original homeland in County Waterford and installed it in the Comeragh Mountains for five days and nights. This journey became a vital role in the narrative of the work. With his father, Finbarr Timmins, Fionn carried the sculpture across the mountain to a site which would align with the sunrise. The artist stayed with his work for the entire duration, attending to the atmospheric changes, sounds and smells of the landscape transitioning a round him. This durational performance, and the film and sound work that resulted, aimed to foster a deeper sense of connection with the landscape and with Ireland’s ancient past.
Fionn’s research is informed by the writings of the late Irish philosopher, John Moriarty, who drew his inspiration from the landscape. An additional inspiration is the recent work of Irish writer and documentary maker Manchán Magan, who proposes mythology as an important knowledge formation, one that can offer a deeper insight into our environment.
The videography was assisted by his sister Caoimhe Timmins. The sound piece was created in collaboration with musician Noah Snyder using gathered audio from the Comeragh Mountains.
Heather graduated from the National College of Art and Design in 2024 with a BA Honours in Fine Art. She is a multidisciplinary artist working across a wide range of mediums, including painting, moving image, and installation art.
Drawing from writers such as Sherry Turkle, her work looks at the increased disembodiment of interpersonal interactions through an increasingly digitised society. The immateriality of digital mediums causes intangibility within communication, which affects how we interact with each other and experience each other’s physicality, emotions, and humanity. In particular she is focused on the relationship between image and consumer, and how consumption of endless visual information pulled from its context has affected this relationship. She speaks to a manufactured numbness through overabundance — an excess of visual information in a medium that feels as though it must be consumed at a fast pace through its interface design.
I Trust You With Your Own Eyes brings disembodied interactions with visual information into an embodied space, through fully interactive installations that mimic the familiar settings of a house — home office, bedroom, bathroom — emulating how online interaction enables and encourages the invasion of privacy and the entitlement towards doing so. She is interested in inviting the viewer to become part of the work, allowing for a more direct conversation, breaking the illusion of physical anonymity customarily granted to the voyeur, and preventing mental disconnection from how they choose to interact with the work.
KEARA SIMONSEN
Winner of the RDS Members’ Art Fund Award
Kapuluan
Keara Simonsen is a graduate of Ulster University’s Belfast School of Art in BA Honours Photography with Video. Living with Cerebral Palsy, Keara was born and raised in Canada and is of Filipino and Northern Irish descent.
Her work is influenced by her personal experiences, including themes of identity, family, diaspora, migration and urban decay. Her most recent project, Kapuluan, is a ten minute poetic documentary film in which she speaks her father’s language of Tagalog to discuss the connection to her Filipino roots and to her father, though she has never spoken the language to that extent before. This unsettling cultural and familial blank in Kapuluan is the main focus of the film.
The very nature of language, whether it be spoken, written, or seen through gestures, is such a vital piece of what it means to form connections with another. In her film, Keara questions human connections and the meanings of home, utilising elements of Gaston Bachelard’s text ‘The Poetics of Space’. As the original text was published in French, then translated and released in English, Keara plays with the idea that by translating it further into Tagalog, the initial meaning may have changed into something entirely different; a metamorphosis of the text.
The visuals in Kapuluan aim to mimic thought and of memories long past, bringing to the forefront themes of family, urban decay, diaspora, migration and identity.
KYLE FAIRBANKS
Midnight Diner (mixed media)
Kyle Fairbanks completed his BA in Fine Art at the Atlantic Technological University, Sligo in 2024. He is a visual artist working in both fine art and sculpture.
Kyle has developed his own unique and whimsical style of drawing. He illustrates buildings and structures in an animated way, distorting and exaggerating images through a mixture of different mediums such as acrylics, inks, pens and pencils.
Here, we see a recreation of one of Kyle’s drawings titled Midnight Diner in 3D rendering. He has created a nostalgic world of wonder using recycled cardboard, styrofoam, wood, paper and acrylic paints. The earthy browns and the warm naturalist palette create a calming moment of escapism, away from our turbulent reality.
This large-scale comic book scene of a futuristic, speculative world has its own language, conceived entirely by Kyle. Kyle hopes that his art encourages our imagination to look to the world beyond, offering levity and retreat from the difficulties of contemporary life.
He has been influenced by artists such as Red Grooms, Jessica Woulfe, Jeff Smith and Roy Lichtenstein. He also took inspiration from the Studio Ghibli films, including Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle.
MARY MADELEINE McCARROLL
Instagram:
List of Works
Fragments of a Douen (Chalk, Soft Pastel and Ink on Blackboard); For the Remembered and the Disremembered (Chalk on Blackboard); Unnamed Fragments of the Douendom (Projection on Blackboard); For the Disremembered and the Remembered (Chalk on Blackboard); Unnamed Lost Douens (Chalk, Soft Pastel and Ink on Blackboard); Four Moments of the Sun (Chalk on Blackboard).
Mary Madeleine graduated with a BA Honours Degree in Fine Art Media from the National College of Art and Design in 2024. She is a multidisciplinary artist whose work interrogates themes of race, identity, and spirituality, with a current emphasis on postcolonialism and its implications for the human condition in modern society.
Mary considers spirituality a potent means for both socio-cultural resistance and the preservation of cultural identity. Her visual language embraces allegory through various mediums, including installation art, photography, sculpture and painting.
Rooted in her Irish and Bahamian heritage — two post-colonial regions —
Mary Madeleine’s artistic practice is shaped by observation and critical analysis of how colonial legacies influence contemporary realities. Her multimedia performance-based installation, Lost and Giddy, scrutinises the deep impacts of colonialism and the ensuing loss of identity. She employs blackboards as pedagogical instruments to impart indigenous African and Caribbean philosophical and spiritual teachings, subverting their traditional institutional function by elevating deeply spiritual cultures historically dismissed as primitive. The installation integrates sculptural representations evoking African traditional sculpture, emphasising the historical appropriation of sacred objects within institutional settings, displaced from their original contexts. However, her sculptures portray Douens — figures drawn from Caribbean folklore — depicted withbackwards feet and disjointed bodies. These lost and giddy figures epitomise the enduring spirit of loss inflicted by colonialism.
Mary’s practice draws inspiration from Guyanese author Wilson Harris, a notable figure in postcolonial discourse who explores the human condition, colonialism, and identity within a metaphysical framework. Harris’s engagement with Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious significantly influenced her portrayal of Douens as fragmented identities, symbolising the psychological impact of colonialism on the unconscious.
SORCHA BROWNING
Winner of the Taylor Art Trust Award and the RDS & Graphic Studio Dublin Emerging
Eden.
Visiting Artist Award
Sorcha is a graduate of Technological University Dublin School of Art & Design, Sherkin Island. She is a multi-disciplinary artist that works across mediums including film, performance and sculpture.
Sorcha’s practice explores the relationships between performativity, iconography and data collection. Sparked through her own sense of ambiguity around cookie collection, she began thinking about this storing and collecting of data as a kind of performative trace left throughout the online world. The “trace” in this instance is something that is feeding mechanised systems of extraction that rely upon a vast amount of inequalities, hierarchies and misleading aphorisms.
Sorcha’s installation Eden. mirrors the fixed perspective of representational painting to allow each character’s performance to play out simultaneously. Rather than instructing the gaze of the viewer through the scene, each character captures attention through sound, gesture and physical expression — their “tastes” each holding symbolic or cultural resonance that hold within them histories and presents of representation and power relations.
List of Works
Make Your Transition (part one and two); THEY / THEM (part one, two and three).
A 2024 graduate of the BA Honours in Fine Art and Painting
from TUS Limerick School of Art and
Design, Stell is a trans, non-binary artist whose work aims to destigmatize the trans experience and make it a more accessible and approachable topic of conversation.
Stell uses their skills in traditional oil painting alongside comic book and storyboarding to follow a trans character. They share an intimate and personal encounter of their navigation through normal everyday tasks that become complicated by their inability to conform to conventional gender roles. Using this unique narrative and style of storytelling, Stell invites the viewer into their world, offering a fresh perspective on a frequently misunderstood community.
In this series we follow the process of Stell transitioning, condensed into the time span of getting ready in the morning to highlight the complexity of everyday tasks, while also illustrating their battle with body dysphoria, demonstrated by their choice of baggy clothes and a balaclava to cover their face. Stell captures the desire to remain hidden, highlighting the discomfort and fear of being perceived and judged.
Ultimately Stell’s work serves as a powerful testament to the resilience and humanity of transgender and non-binary individuals, while also challenging societal norms and fostering conversations about inclusivity and acceptance. Through their art, they offer a glimpse into their personal experiences, inviting viewers to engage with empathy and understanding.
2024: Curator with Shortlisted Artists
Left to Right:
Ava Lowry, Fionn Timmins, Cahal O’Connell (Miss Mary Jane), Keara Simonsen, Mary Madeleine McCarroll, Colin Martin (curator), Stell De Burca, Claire Ritchie, Kyle Fairbanks, Heather Hughes and Sorcha Browning.
2024: Colleges & Longlisted Artists
ATU Galway
Elisabeth Banim, BA in Contemporary Art
Hannah Daly, BA in Contemporary Art
Aimee O’Brien O’Riordan, BA in Contemporary Art
Charlotte Moran, BA in Contemporary Art
ATU Mayo
Rachel Corcoran, BA in Contemporary Art Practices
Michelle Gannon, BA in Contemporary Art Practices
ATU Sligo
Kyle Fairbanks, BA in Fine Art
Maria May, BA in Fine Art
Susie Harty, BA in Fine Art
Elyssa McDonagh, BA in Fine Art
Bernadette Savage, BA in Fine Art
Burren College of Art
Phoebe Tohl, MFA Art and Ecology
Erin Besch, MFA
DeAnna Boyer, Master of Art & Ecology
Chloe Teets, Masters of Art (MA)
Veronika Constantinou, Master of Art & Ecology
IADT Dun Laoghaire
Ryan Egan, BA (Hons) Art
Moya Woods, BA (Hons) Art
Paola Iacovone, BA (Hons) Art
Emily Ryan, BA (Hons) Art
Hannah Jones, BA (Hons) Art
Teo Cursaru, BA (Hons) Art
Molly Doyle, BA (Hons) Art
Aveen McKernan, BA (Hons) Art
Eilis McLoughlin, BA (Hons) Art
Camille Peat, BA (Hons) Art
Vanda Brown, BA (Hons) Art
Sean Farrell, BA (Hons) Art
Jamie Howard, BA (Hons) Art
Evanna Devine, BA (Hons) Photography
Nick Willoughby, BA (Hons) Photography
Finbar Flanagan, BA (Hons) Photography
Róisín Lambert, BA (Hons) Photography
Emer/Yimeng Wang, MA in Art & Research Collaboration
Breege Fahy, MA in Art & Research Collaboration
Sorcha McNamara, MA in Art & Research Collaboration
Lorraine Elder, MA in Art & Research Collaboration
MTU Crawford College Cork
Hannah Roberts, Fine Art BA (Hons)
Lisa O’Sullivan, Fine Art BA (Hons)
Murrough O’Donovan, Fine Art BA (Hons)
Leslie Allen Spillane, Fine Art BA (Hons)
Lara Quinn, Fine Art BA (Hons)
Adam O’Lomasney, Fine Art BA (Hons)
Holly Halligan, Fine Art BA (Hons)
Fionn Timmins, Fine Art BA (Hons)
Christina Loughlin, Contemporary Applied Art BA (Hons)
Aron O’Connell, Fine Art BA (Hons)
Isobel McCarthy, Fine Art BA (Hons)
Christina Flynn, BA (Hons) Contemporary Applied Art
Camilla Corti, Fine Art (BA Honours)
Kathy Cronin, Fine Art (BA Honours)
NCAD Dublin
Fionn McQueen, BA in Fine Art
Adam Fry, BA (Joint) in Education and Fine Art
Shannon Dowdall, BA (Joint) in Education and Fine Art
Fiach McGuinne, BA, College Curator Longlist
Niamh Tohill, BA (Joint) Fine Art Print and Education
Kitty Bentley, BA (Joint) Education and Fine Art
Julie Cleere, BA (Hons) Fine Art Print
Orin Tomás Ó Grianna, BA in Fine Art, Sculpture and Expanded Practice
Millie Case, BA in Fine Art (International), Sculpture & Expanded Practice
Mollie Donegan, BA in Fine Art, Sculpture and Expanded Practice
Heather Hughes, BA Hons Fine Art Media and International
Mary Madeline McCarroll, BA Fine Art Media
Louise Jaeger, BA in Fine Art Media
Amy Bryan, BA in Fine Art Media
Ciara Maxwell, BA (Hons) Fine Art and Education
Kate Hynes, MFA Fine Art
Tammy Quane, MFA Fine Art
Walker Shaw, MFA Fine Art
2024: Colleges & Longlisted Artists
SETU Waterford
Katie Condon, BA (Hons) in Visual Art
David Harrington, BA (Hons) in Visual Art
Elaine Somers Cashen, BA (Hons) in Visual Art
Shauna Bolger Farrell, BA (Hons) in Visual Art
SETU Wexford
Sarah Holden, BA (Hons) in Art
Anna McKinstry, BA (Hons) in Art
TU Dublin (Grangegorman)
Chris Forrester, BA (Hons) Fine Art
Michael Shane Cox, BA (Hons) Fine Art
Johanna Fennessy, BA (Hons) Fine Art
Jessie Aylmer, BA (Hons) Fine Art
Emma Swan, BA (Hons) Fine Art
Amanda Robinson Kelly, BA (Hons) Fine Art
Alicia Donnan, BA (Hons) Photography
Ciara Richardson, BA (Hons) Photography
David Otruba, BA (Hons) Photography
Sinéad Tarmey, BA (Hons) Photography
Natalie Allen, BA (Hons) in Visual Art
TU Dublin (Sherkin Island)
Sorcha Browning, BA (Hons) in Visual Art
Hammond Journeaux, BA (Hons) in Visual Art
Ava Lowry, BA (Hons) Fine Art
TUS Limerick
James Wellwood, BA (Hons) Fine Art
Stell De Burca, BA (Hons) Fine Art
Kayleigh Dodd, BA (Hons) Print Contemporary Practice
Megan Byrne, BA (Hons) Photography and Moving Image
Francesca Ogbuachai, BA (Hons) Photography and Moving Image
Feá McCoy, BA (Hons) Photography and Moving Image
Amy Bowdren, BA (Hons) in Fine Art in Sculpture and Combined Media
Laura O’Keeffe, BA (Hons) Photography and Moving Image
Lucy Kate Fahy, BA (Hons)
Ulster University Belfast
Keara Simonsen, BA (Hons) Photography with Video
Anna Boyles, BA (Hons) Photography with Video
Jake Hughes, BA (Hons) Photography with Video
Jeremiasz Ojrzynski, MFA Photography
Christina Lynn, BA (Hons) Fine Art
Dearbhail McNulty, BA (Hons) Fine Art Sculpture Lens
Cahal O’Connell (Miss Mary Jane), BA (Hons) Fine Art
Colleen McSheffrey, BA (Hons) Fine Art
Benjamin Lanigan, BA (Hons) Fine Art
Claire Ritchie, BA (Hons) Fine Art
Marnie Glass, BA (Hons) Fine Art
Wilhelmina Peace Covington, BA (Hons) Fine Art Print Making
Peter Carrington, BA (Hons) Fine Art Print Making
Lisa Gowdy, BA (Hons) Fine Art
Alannah Bates, MFA
Judah Jibrin, MFA
Finn Nichol, MFA
Nicola Murray, BA (Hons) Fine Art
Rachel Kavanagh, MFA
Umeå University Sweden
Laoise Ní Ghríofa, MFA
2024: Longlisted Artists Video
Colleges in order of appearance:
Atlantic Technological University (ATU) Galway City; Burren College of Art; Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dún Laoghaire; MTU Crawford College of Art and Design; National College of Art & Design; SETU Waterford Campus; SETU Wexford Campus; Technological University Dublin School of Art & Design; Limerick School of Art and Design; Technological University of Shannon (TUS); TU Dublin (Uillinn, West Cork & Sherkin Island); Belfast School of Art; Ulster University; Griffith College; Atlantic Technological University (ATU) Sligo and Atlantic Technological University (ATU) Mayo.
Click above to watch the video or watch it on → YouTube.
CURATOR’S TALKS at the RHA
Saturday 30 November & Saturday 07 December (Free entry)
Join exhibition curator, Colin Martin RHA for an insightful free tour of the RDS Visual Art Awards Exhibition.
→ 30 Nov. Details here.
→ 07 Dec. Details here.
RDS CRAFT AWARDS 2024
at Gifted, RDS Main Hall
Áine Ryan
Christopher Tuohy
Cora Cummins
Eva Lynch
Killian O’Flaherty
Sam Daly
Síne Vasquez
Entropy by Sophie Kate Curran (RDS Craft Awards 2021).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The RDS Committee of Arts
Dr Marie Bourke (Chair)
Katharine Maurer (Vice Chair)
Emmet Kane
Séamus Crimmins
Kieran Owens
Caitríona Shaffrey
Lynda M. Carroll
Caroline Phelan
Gaby Smyth
Feargal Hynes
Exhibition Team
Colin Martin, Invited Curator, Head of RHA Schools
Patrick T. Murphy, Director, RHA Gallery
Damien Flood, Lead Technician, Maurice Ward
Kevin Doyle, Lead Technician, CT Group
Ronnie Smith, Managing Director, W Display
Karen Phillips, Arts Programme Manager
Rebecca Kelly, Arts Programme Executive
Ian Hart, Technical and Facilities Manager, RHA
Jack O’Dea, Social Media Consultant for the RDS Visual Art Awards 2024
Members & Patrons
Thank you to the invaluable Members and Patrons of both the RDS and RHA for their ongoing enthusiasm and support, and to all those who have made this exhibition possible.
Sponsors & Partners
The family of Mr Robin Lewis-Crosby; the Taylor Art Trust; the RDS Members’ Arts Fund; Mason Hayes & Curran LLP; Nora Hickey M’Sichili, Director – Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris; The Royal Hibernian Academy and Graphic Studio Dublin.
The RDS Visual Art Awards is part of the RDS Arts Programme which supports the transition from student to emerging artist, encouraging the pursuit of a career in visual art, craft and music.
Please contact the artists directly about commissions.
Speak to us today about becoming a member of the RDS and support our philanthropic work by emailing members@rds.ie and see here for further details about the RDS Arts Programme or email arts@rds.ie
All information is correct at time of going to print
Arts Programme Manager Karen Phillips
Arts Programme Executive Rebecca Kelly
Technical Team W Display (Build), Creative Technology Ireland (AV) and The Maurice Ward Group (Art Installation).
Photography Images of artwork supplied by the artists.
