Artists
1
Tadhg O’Cuirín
Shelly McDonnell
2
Sarah Ingersoll
3
Roisin McAuley
Jessica Nickel
4
Sarah Quick
Ruby Wallis
6
Seamus Keane
7
Sorsha Galvin
8
Maeve Curtis
9
Dave Callan
Eimear Jean McCormack
Brid Egan
10
Cecilia Danell
11
Victoria Smith
12
Angela O'Brien
13
Kate Molloy
Roisin O'Sullivan
Winnie Pun
Orbital
Tim Acheson
Clare Lymer
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Tadhg O’Cuirín
In his work, Tadhg explores themes of personality construction and the ego, with nods to to the self referentiality of contemporary visual culture, within the context of the advent of new digital media, the internet and social networking websites.
While we as human beings have always made use of a complex array of signifiers in our construction of a chosen personality, the recent widespread uptake of social networking, blogging and online avatars has added a whole new array of potential sign activity to our repertoire. It is this confusion created by not quite knowing who or what is real online that Ó Cuirrín tries to evoke in his work.
Tadhg studied and achieved his Honours Degree in Fine Art, Painting in the Limerick School of Art and Design in 2009. He has exhibited around the country and in 2008 won the Hunt Museum Group Painting Exhibition, 1st Purchase Prize. He currently lives and works in Galway city and is a board member of 126 - Artist run gallery, and Adapt Galway.
www.nightvisionart.blogspot.com
Shelly is a visual artist based in Galway. Her work explores the idea of memories being at once romantic and flawed. Her landscapes are painted from memory, which inevitably communicates not an accurate depiction of a landscape but recalls an impression of the experience of being in and knowing a place.
Shelly graduated with an Honours Degree in Fine Art Painting from the National College of Art Deign, Dublin in 2004. Shelly was selected to be part of the group exhibition representing Ireland in the 2004 Interceltic Art Exhibition in Lorient, France. She is curator of the annual contemporary art exhibition “The Coach House Show” in Dublin Castle, now in its seventh year.
Sarah Ingersoll graduated with a BA honours degree from the Glasgow School of Art in 2008. She was selected for the Royal Scottish Acadamy’s 2009 New Contemporaries show and has exhibited internationally.
Sarah’s practice encompasses sculpture, drawing, performance, photography and animation in order to explore notions of transformation and mythmaking. She currently lives and works in Galway.
Roisin McAuley is a visual artist based in Galway. Roisin graduated with a first class honours in painting, from Crawford College of art and design, in 2008. Since moving to Galway she has taken part in several exhibitions, in Ireland, taken private commissions and was one of the founding members of Groundworks Studios.
The central focus of her work is the isolated human figure; her interest in the physicality of the human form is driven by its emotional substance and its ability to connect with viewers directly. Her work increasingly seeks an empathetic response from the voyeur, through the pose, body language and mood.
The expression of colour is dominant in Roisin’s exploration of the painting process. It is that which defines the shape, motion, and depth of her work. She is concerned with disciplines involved in painting, and the desire to manipulate the paint and create a three dimensional image on a flat surface, through the sculpting of light and shadow and the use of subtle brushstrokes.
Jessica Nickel is currently living in Galway for the next year as visiting artist from San Jose, California. She graduated from the University of Oregon where she received a B.A. in Art with a focus in Painting and a B.A. in English Literature.
She is interested in the abstract process of the mind, particularly how our perception alters the visual reality. In her work she uses color and form to circumvent the limiting function of verbal language in relating memory and perception, whether it be a specific memory or a portrait of its method. She works primarily with oil paint on stretched canvas but continues to explore other artistic mediums.
Sarah Elaine Quick is a Canadian artist now living and working out of Galway. She graduated – with distinction –from Mount Allison University with a Bachelor degree in Fine Art. Sarah has worked and shown in both Canada and Ireland and is the recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshield Foundation Award and the John P. Asimakos Award in Painting. Recently, she completed a four-month residency at the Burren College of Art where she held a solo exhibition entitled The Struggle.
Working primarily in oil paint, Sarah’s work explores the construction of identities and modern myth making.
Ruby Wallis is a practice based PhD researcher with National College of Art & Design (NCAD), Degree of Fine Art Media and GradCAM. She completed her M.A. in Documentary Photography in 2007 at The University of Newport, Wales and a Degree in Fine Art Painting at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology in 2004.
Wallis has been exhibiting internationally since 2002 and has been working as a lecturer at Griffith College Dublin in Photography Theory. She has been a Community Artist-Facilitator with CREATE, Practice.ie and the Galway Arts Centre since 2002. She has been short-listed for the Gallery of Photography's Artist Award in 2006 and 2009 and was part of their touring show An Insiders View Festival of Contemporary Photography which exhibited in Dublin, Arles, Paris and Berlin in 2008. Wallis has had work published and reviewed in The British Journal of Photography in 2008, Circa Art Magazine in Spring 2008 and The Irish Times in both 2006 and 2010.
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Seamus Keane
Seamus Keane works and lives in Galway, Ireland. He has a Cert in Graphic Design and both a Diploma and Degree in Fine Art from Sligo IT. He works as part of the Engage studios in Middle Street in Galway city. Seamus teaches Grinds in Art Development for pre-college and portfolio students, which he considers to be of great help in understanding his own work.
Seamus' current work is a re-imagining of classical art-works with modern sensibilities, hoping to reconnect with the more painterly classic themes which will spring board into a long gestating personal project. Seamus works mostly in Oil on Canvas but has been known to incorporate Print, Sound and Video into his work as he deems necessary.
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Sorsha Galvin
Sorsha Galvin is a visual artist from county Galway. In 2011 she graduated from Galway mayo institute of technology with a first class honors degree in fine art.
Sorsha's work explores the intimacy we share with inanimate objects and how we use nostalgia as a technique to maintain a stable self or to ground oneself.
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Maeve Curtis
A graduate of NUI, Galway, Maeve Curtis gained a First Class Honours Degree in Fine Art from GMIT. Awarded AIB Graduate of the Year in Paint and Galway City and Galway County Council Emerging Artist Awards, her work has been selected for Tulca (2010, '07, '04), Claremorris Open (2007, '05), Iontas (2007), RDS Art Awards (2006), Impressions Open (2008), Galway Arts Festival (2010) and Upstart (2011). Since graduating Curtis has exhibited in three-person shows with Norman Villa Gallery and Claremorris Gallery and has had two solo exhibitions with Galway Arts Centre (2008) and Norman Villa Gallery (2010).
In addition to her artistic practice, Curtis is Chairperson of Engage Art Studios and works as a freelance art educator with Rehabcare, Galway Arts Centre and Cancer Care West to promote and develop ongoing engagement with contemporary visual art. Her work has been purchased for the collection of the President of Ireland (2008) and most recently for the Galway City Council collection (2011).
Dave Callan’s work is concerned with human constructs and societal structures of the western world. Utilizing a variety of media, he creates satirical pieces from an ‘end times’ perspective in an attempt to document their perceived decline.
Dave is an artist and curator based in Galway city. He holds a BA from GMIT Cluain Mhuire and practices from Engage Art Studios. A former chairperson of 126, Artist-run Gallery, he is also a member of the collectives Expanded Draught and Angry Hammers.
His interests include degradation, third world solutions, wastelands, Tayto crisps, Vic and Bob, Dieter Dengler, PJ Carroll’s, Harp Lager, tweets, memes, gifs and cats. He has never exhibited in Berlin.
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Eimearjean McCormack graduated in 2007 with an MA in Fine Art Print from Camberwell College of Art, University of The Arts, London. She has exhibited widely in Ireland as well as New York, London, France and China. Awards to date include the Lower Eastside Print Studio New York Residency Award 2010, Arts Council Travel & Training Award 2010, Cork Printmakers Residency Award (2008), Camberwell College of Art MA Printmaking Award 2007, de Blacam and Meagher Architects Award 2004. Her work is in the collections of OPW, Scott Tallon Walker Architects and University College Cork.
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From Knock in Co. Mayo, Brid Egan is a Visual Artist, living and working in Galway. She is also the promoter of The Rosa Parks Art Gallery.
Since graduating from GMIT (Cluain Mhuire Art College) in 2009 with Honours degree, and Student of the Year, in Art & Design, She converted her home into the Rosa Parks Art Gallery.
Egan's work is predominantly Oil on Canvas, She works intuitively in a free style. Music and poetry is a strong influence in her work. She has produced some video and sculptural work. Her work investigates people and the relationships they have with one another. Listening to music, and reading poetry allows her to be free, letting her thoughts roam, to paint as her ears and eyes see fit to the rhythms that are stronger than her.
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Cecilia Danell is a Swedish artist based in Galway since 2004. She graduated from the GMIT in Galway in 2008 with a first class honours degree in painting and was awarded Paint student of the year.
In her work feelings of otherness and longing combine with questions concerning identity and the
perception of the Self. Utopian and Dystopian landscapes act as stage sets where the boundaries between the universal and the personal, the known and the unknown, reality and fiction become blurred.
Since graduating Cecilia has exhibited in Ireland and the USA, including group and two person shows in The Red House Arts Centre in Syracuse NY, The Crow Gallery in Dublin, Galway Arts Centre, 126 Gallery and The Claremorris Open.
Victoria Smith makes work that is about the tangible site, mundane reality and the recreation of the readymade reality. Her practice explores themes of the fragmented urban and rural site, domesticity, connections, memory, loss and identity. The use of material negotiates a colonial history with a personal history within an architectural metaphor and space. The essence of the material holds a history, a sense of absence, loss, trace and curiosity which resonates in the photographs, made objects, installations, drawings and paintings. Within this search various feelings, words and thoughts arise within the search for roots, the personal research for the artist on the family relationship between England and Ireland and how to make this connection.
Smith is an artist, writer, curator and teacher. She is completing her MA, Art in the Contemporary World, at NCAD and is the new chairperson on the board of 126 artist led space, Galway. She has taught and exhibited extensively in Ireland, England, Africa, America and Europe.
Angela O'Brien
Angela is from Co. Galway and studied Art & Design in the 1980’s. Moved to Germany and came back to Ireland in the late 1990’s. Returned to art studies in 2003, attending GMIT (Chluain Mhuire) completing it with an Honours Degree in Art & Design (Paint) in 2006. Lives in Galway City.
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Kate Molloy graduated from GMIT in 2011 with a BA (honours) in Fine Art Painting. Her work is a combination of abstract paintings and drawings which are generally small in scale. The basis of the work is on elements of the everyday, captured on camera then transformed into paintings. The main focus of the work however is in its placement and how this can create a conversation amongst the pieces. In a way posing the question can paintings or drawings influence the work around them by considering the way they have been arranged together?
Roísín O’Sullivan has recently completed an Honours degree in Fine Art at Cluain Mhuire, GMIT. Her practice includes painting, drawing and video installation. Roísín’s work continues to examine nature as a subject. The idea of active looking is exemplified through the distinctive marks that are painted on and drilled into the surface. The work explores and signifies the beauty in both the familiar and mysterious qualities between nature and culture.
Winnie Pun graduated in 2011 with a BA in Fine Art (Paint) from Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology.
Her practice encourages active seeing. By subverting photography and video to create an ambiguous moment, the mechanism of seeing and the nature of representation can be re-examined within the context of painting.
Tim Acheson is a visual artist based in Galway City. His practice consists of object making, video and sound. In 2009 he graduated from GMIT with a first class honours degree (sculpture). His work deals with the human aspect and reaction to the physical landscape particularly its processing through cartography and topography.(The instruments, theories and history of this process inform his work) An interest in meteorology and field recording are also features of his practice.
He is currently an orbital member of Engage Studios.
timacheson.carbonmade.com
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Clare Lymer returned to her hometown Galway after graduating with a B.A. in (Hons) Photography from Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London in 2009. Her work is centred on the properties and behaviours of light, exploring photography’s dependence on light as a transparent medium as well as lights lack of means to manifest itself independently of matter. Her images harness sunlight to make the invisible visible.
Clare’s graduate work has been used to front projects by Source Photographic Review, the Arts Council of England’s ‘Own Art’ initiative and Camberwell College of Arts to promote their B.A. Photography course. In 2009, curator Johan Sjöström of The Gothenburg Museum of Art in Sweden chose Clare’s work as part of his best 6 graduating photography students from the U.K. and Ireland. In 2010 she was an artist in residence at the Burren College of Art and has been published and exhibited in Ireland, the U.K. and Germany.
© 2011 Engage Art Studios