Hilary Morley is a visual artist living in Galway in the West of Ireland. Her themes are based on her passion for landscape and suburbia, as well as a colourful view of life as a homemaker. She has curated multi-disciplinary exhibitions for The Galway International Arts Festival, Ceramics Ireland, Galway Design Week, Farmleigh Gallery, Dublin and The Wandesford Quay Gallery Cork.  She edits an online journal about Irish traditional and contemporary craft called http://www.making.ie/

Nicola Gunwhy graduated with an M.A. in Creative Practice from GMIT in 2017, her thesis subject being: ‘Women’s Experiences of Illness: Reflections on historical legacy, societal perceptions and bodily autonomy.’

The work is focused on corporeality, identity and heath care, with pertinent issues including the historic and social construction of diagnoses; ownership of medical information; equitable access to care; bodily autonomy; power and the political implications of illness, vulnerability and precarity.

Her practice is transdisciplinary and draws upon personal and professional experiences of illness and health care provision. She is interested in the intersection between Arts and Health and holds membership in several affiliated organisations including Visual Artists Ireland, Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) Specialist Interest Group for Arts, Health & Wellbeing (UK) and Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance (UK). Her solo exhibition, Can we ever really see each other? was presented by Galway International Arts Festival, Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust, 2017.

www.nicolagunwhy.com

Jane Queally, from Co Clare, lives in Galway city, completed an MA in Visual Art Practice from IADT 2012 and a BA in Fine Art (Hons) from Sligo Institute of Technology 2002. She works predominately in painting and experimental photographic media, the latter is broadly concerned with analysing representations of the photographic image in print media as ‘document’, in the construct of social narrative. Jane is currently developing new work in her
painting practice.
She has exhibited in several solo and group exhibitions, including Tulca festival of visual art, Claremorris Open 2011/12/14. ‘Public Gesture’ The Lab, Foley St, Dublin 2011. 126 Annual members show 2012/14. Selected International artists exhibition ‘Teling Lies’ Rua Red Tallagh 2015 curated by Paul Mc Aree. Most recently exhibiting in ‘ Material Conditions’ selected group show with Engage members at Platform Arts , Belfast. She has been the recipient of Visual Art Bursary awards from Galway City and County councils and the D O’Sullivan Graphic Medal from the Sligo Institute of Technology. Her work is in a number of public and private collections including H.E.T.A.C Dublin, Aras an Uachtarain and S.I.T., Bank Of Ireland.

Jojo Hynes completed her MA in Fine Art at Kingston University, London and a degree in Fine Art from CCAM, GMIT, Galway. She has exhibited nationally and internationally in group and solo shows. Jojo has participated in residencies in London, Krocow, Stuggart and Budapest. As a member of the art collective Triangular Brush she has created exhibitions and events across London, Ireland and the rest of Europe.

Jojo Hynes’ current practice explores representations of real and fictional female protagonists, playing with hierarchies. She is influenced by where the past and the present meet and overlap, using collage across a range of media including film, sculpture, sound, paint and print.

Jojo Hynes is also an artist educator with over 10 years experience working with a variety of organisations in Australia, UK and Ireland. She is currently a Creative Associate for the Arts Council of Irelands Creative Schools initiative.

Noelle Gallagher practice is informed by architectural space, with the former medical school of UCD at Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin providing the source material for her current body of work. Her visits to Earlsfort Terrace were triggered by a curiosity as to how the spaces had reinvented themselves since UCD’s move to the suburbs at Belfield. One significant change that caught her attention, was how the high ceilings of the former dissection room at Earlsfort which were designed to limit exposure to formaldehyde and the smells of the mortuary, now provide interesting acoustics for musicians of the National Concert Hall who rehearse in the space.

Maeve Curtis’ art practice is a meditation on the mysteries, anxieties and metaphysics which ghost around imaging technologies. A graduate of National University of Ireland, Galway she had a ten year corporate management career under her belt when she decided to study Fine Art. She gained a First Class Honours Degree in Fine Art from Centre for Creative Arts and Media, GMIT, Ireland. In 2007, she was also awarded the AIB Graduate of the Year in Paint and Galway City & Galway County Council Emerging Artist Awards

Cecilia Danell (b.1985) is a Swedish-born, Galway-based artist working with painting, film and installation. Through her own encounters with the Scandinavian landscape, she explores the theatricality of places that become imbued with artifice, as they can’t live up to the human need for that which is primal, wild and untouched.

Recent exhibitions include: 'Winter Wanderer' (solo) Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin (2019), ’Futures Series 3 Episode 2’ Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), Dublin (2018), ‘Island Life’, Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin (2018), Beep Painting Biennial, Swansea, UK (2018), ‘The Last Wilderness’ (solo) at The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon (2017) and Galway Arts Centre (2017) which garnered a five star review in the Irish Times: "A landscape of the mind, and a terrifically effective one too" (Aidan Dunne 28/03/17) with an upcoming solo exhibition in the Ashford Gallery, RHA in March 2019. She was a 2017 recipient of the Arts Council Next Generation Award and has previously received Arts Council Bursary and Project Awards (2010, 2011, 2017), the 2011 Wexford Arts Centre Emerging Artist Award, Galway City Council Bursary- and Tyrone Guthrie Centre Residency Awards and a 2016 residency award at the Nordic Artists’ Centre Dale, Norway funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Culture. Her work is in the collections of the Office of Public Works, Kelly Resort Hotel, Rosslare, Galway City Council, Wexford County Council, Motala Municipal Council, Sweden and private collections in Sweden, Norway, the UK, and Ireland. Cecilia Danell is represented by Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin.

www.ceciliadanell.com  

www.kevinkavanagh.ie

www.eimearjeanmccormack.com

Eimearjean graduated in 2007 with a Masters in Fine Art Print from the University of the Arts London.  In 2016 she completed a second Masters in Graphic Design specializing in publication design projects primarily informed by artists’ books and zine culture. She has exhibited extensively throughout Ireland and on an international scale in cities such as New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Detroit, Berlin, London, Lorient and Taiwan. Recent exhibitions include Art and Architecture Interwoven, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, New Prints, The International Print Center New York, The Future Is Self Organized, Limerick City Gallery of Art, Summer Show, The Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), Tracing my Echo, Zweigstelle Gallery Berlin and Kaleid, The Art Academy London.

Collections: The National Gallery of Ireland, OPW, Scott Tallon Walker Architects, The Bank of New York, Dundee Visual Research Centre, The Zuckerman Museum of Art, Georgia, USA.

Brenda Flannery, from Co Mayo is a visual artist based in Galway since 2012. She graduated from The Centre of Creative Arts and Media, GMIT with a First Class Honours degree in 2015. She was shortlisted for the RDS student awards and completed the SIM residency in Reykjavik, Iceland in July 2017.Her practice has evolved by examining the concept of time-consciousness. Time connects creation, memory, differential space, speeds and singularity. It consists of the collective history of memory and how it affects the way we perceive and experience the present. The standardisation and measurement of time produces an inner struggle to try and continuously pin down time. Inspired by the rural landscape the work represents a quest for calm and a search for a space of peace and stillness.Flannery uses a broad range of mediaincluding paint, video, photography and installation.

Vicky Smith is a visual artist, arts educator and arts administrator from Galway. She is a member of Engage Art Studios. Her work is interdisciplinary using drawing, painting, objects, photography, appropriated films, writing, printmaking, ceramics and sculpture. Smith was recipient of the Artist in School Residency from Galway County Council in 2017 and 2016. She joined the Impressions Print Exhibition team in 2016 as  studio manager of Galway Print Studio(2016-2017). Smith founded Galway Arts Education Agency in 2015, a mobile art school and is developing a Gallery of Children's Art in Galway city. Previous to this she was the chairperson and board member of 126 Artist-led Gallery (2010-2012) and education coordinator on the steering committee for FEACH, a new visual art space initiative for Galway City and County.  

Exhibitions include: Somewhere between perception and reality, Olivier Cornet Gallery. An exhibition first presented at VUE 2018, Ireland’s National Contemporary Art Fair (1-4 November 2018, RHA, Dublin), Inside the Box Engage Art Studios, Culture Night(2018), Conversations on Making (Galway, 2018), Fragmented Shore, Just Art it, Galway (2018), Narrating Self, Translating the Other, Galway Arts Centre (2018) VUE Contemporary Art fair, RHA(2017), Material Conditions, Platform Arts, Belfast(2017),  EP'17 Print Exchange, Black Gate Cultural Space, Galway (2017), Nasty Women, Pallas/Projects
www.vickysmith.ie

Statement
Recent work references historical and contemporary acts of rebellion by women in the workplace, family or creative lives. Smith rearranges the domestic domicile around this rebellious mindset. Incorporating objects and elements from the home, such as; blinds; mop heads; irons; fashion items; balaclava's; domestic place mats; images of suburbia and 1960's America housewives; images of the many roles a woman can play. These juxtapositions create an uneasy relationship between the past and the present. She articulates these stories through collage. The juxtaposition of these stories acts as snapshots of captured moments. The work is interdisciplinary using, drawing, painting, objects, photography, appropriated films, writing, printmaking, and ceramics. Smith transforms and rebuilds using every tangible media to question conventions of this female architectural timeline of change.

Through this practice she examines the shifting role of women in the last century and the effects of balancing a domestic and creative life. The idea of a female struggle, a struggle to produce work while limited by the circumstance of everyday obligations. Smith uses women's narratives as reference points for herself to realize these themes and explore her subjective experience against those of other creatives from different social and historical backgrounds.

Smith uses installation as a symbol for an enclosure, where objects can inhabit a space similar to the structure of a home. The installation acts as a stage set, awaiting actors and an audience. She endeavours to explore the female subject through self-representation, drawing on the history of performance in feminist art practice.

Simon Daly is originally from Kerry but now based in Galway. He graduated from CCAM, GMIT, with a bachelor (HONS.) in Fine Art in 2015. His paintings cover many themes and he is interested in mark making form and shape. Simon mainly uses oils but introduces other mediums to his work when  needed.

“Without thought or intention I started painting everything I was looking at pallet knifes brushes etc. I also became influenced by the shapes outside the window. My palette began to be influenced by my new surroundings. From the blue carpet, green trees, pink skies outside and cars and buses passing peoples cloths I would paint loose and fast and hang them on the wall and move swiftly on to the next.”

Red Burke is a native of Roscommon who spent his entire working life in the computer and electronics industry in Galway. During that time, he studied art in GMIT, part time for six years and one year full time, and completed an Honours Degree in Fine Arts. Red completed an MA in Creative Practice in 2017 at GMIT. His practice involves the production of paintings based on a former Digital computer industry in Galway and the Marconi radio communication station in Clifden. As an artist, he is fascinated with the way that computer and radio components are laid out with respect to each other. Red seeks to breathe life into a forgotten era and display it on canvas.

Michelle Hill is a native of Galway who graduated from CCAM, GMIT, with a BA (Hons.) in Fine Art in 2015. She works primarily in paint but also has a keen interest in photography.

Paul Malone is a visual artist based in Mayo. His visual art practice utilises painting, photography and film. Erosion, magnetism, and gravity are some of the forces that shape Paul's art. Rather than painting the landscape Paul engages directly with the environment, using found materials to create textures and pigments. He is interested in the connection between the influence of the physical forces on the environment and the seemingly unrelated process by which human thoughts are formed. In the romantic tradition of landscape painting, thoughts are disembodied. The observer is outside the environment. In his work, by contrast, Paul sees thoughts, about the painting and about the environment that produced it, as forming patterns which are created by physical forces and chemical reactions that are rooted in the body. He likens the influence of physics on matter as being analogous to how ideas take form then influence people, events and things. Paul is a graduate of NUI Galway and has an honors degree in Visual Communication and a Masters in Film Direction and Production. He is currently attaining a postgraduate qualification to be an educator in the creative arts sector. Paul is a published author and photographer. He has exhibited his paintings in selected venues around Galway and is currently collaborating with the award winning poet Noel Duffy on a moving image installation in Dublin. You can follow his work by searching @paulmaloneart on facebook or by visiting https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaloneArt/

Deirdre Deegan is a Galway based Artist-Teacher with specialised experience in Printmaking and Photography. Deirdre recently completed her MA studies in Creative Practice and her studio work and research thesis reflect on identity and the dual role of the Artist-Teacher. Deirdre graduated with a first-class honour in Art & Design Teacher Education from LIT in 2014 having previously completed her honours degree in printmaking at GMIT. In 2014 Galway City Council awarded her an Individual Artists Bursary and in 2012 she was selected for the Claremorris Open Exhibition. Deirdre also spent three weeks in Finland in 2011 on an artist’s bursary awarded by Leargas and Galway VEC. She has taken part in several group exhibitions in Galway, Dublin and London and her work is held in private collections. Deirdre has worked as a volunteer in the Education Centre in Limerick Prison and has given several lectures as an invited artist to students in GMIT. Deirdre’s particular interest in art education and its connectivity with people has led her to recently establish her own art school; Galway Art Academy.

Angela O'Brien is from Co. Galway and has achieved an Honours Degree in Art & Design (Paint) from GMIT (Chluain Mhuire). Her works are informed through the mediums of photography, painting and drawing. She experiments in creating compositions that don’t necessarily follow a theme but come into being organically from the act of creating and 'playing' with materials, images and everyday observation. Angela lives in Galway.

Seamus current work varies in themes, but always seems to connect the Man made world with that of the natural world and sprinkles of a Magical world that doesnt quite exist. Seamus works mostly in oil on canvas but has been known to incorporate Print, Sound and Video into his work as he deems necessary.

Joan Sugrue is a Galway based visual artist who obtained her degree in Fine Art (First Class Honours) in 2011 from GMIT and was awarded Student of the Year in Paint. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally including RDS Student Awards, Irish Wave III Bejing, China, Eigse and as part of the Kitchen Table Collective in Tulca (2011). In November 2012 she won the ARTSTAP Title Award for critical writing.

Born in Italy, Ilaria has been based in Galway since 2014.  Her work is very much connected to the materials including fabrics, threads and fibers used in combination with other mediums and techniques. These elements represent her origins and her essential environment. Through them she communicates her states of mind and aesthetic views. Coming from an industrialised background her focus is on putting her experience and knowledge into her creations, concentrating on the development of a sustainable way of living and working.

In Ireland she works as a costume maker and follows the Slow Fashion Movement.  Her art is inspired by the elements and their connection with a deeper awareness.After getting a diploma in textile engineering at the I.T.I.S.V.E.M.(Valdagno IT), she specialised in pattern making and has worked in the fashion field since. In 2012 she attended the Art programme at the U. Boccioni Institute of Art (Valdagno IT), member of Galway Print studio 2016-2018.

AVI RATNAYAKE’S current project looks at the space between things that last a short time and a significant length of time. Using analogue cameras to capture landscapes in exposures up to 4 months long, he makes solagraphs that make a record of the larger or more permanent. He uses photographic paper to record these images. The image that is slowly made over the months of exposure is prone to the various elements, especially light, so it must be digitised when taken out of the camera. Avi has been practicing as an artist and photographer since 2003 and has had exhibitions in both UK and Ireland. His work has taken him through digital and analogue photography.

Stephanie McLaughlin is a visual artist working in the west of Ireland. Within her practice she is drawn to unremarkable features or structures within the landscape. She depicts fragmented landscape, small structures, light and shade. McLaughlin creates these images in a manner which is visually arresting, as she is seeking a type of poetics in the landscape. McLaughlin’s oil paintings which result from this exploration, are varied in scale.

McLaughlin has had two solo exhibitions in Galway, and has been involved in numerous group shows. She was longlisted for the RDS Visual Arts Awards in 2016.

McLaughlin’s work has been purchased by Galway City Council, and she has completed numerous private commissions. She has recently competed an MA in Creative Practice at the Centre for Creative Arts and Media in Galway.

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Elena Moreno is a Spanish artist, based in Galway. Passionate about art from a young age and fascinated with the creative process, Elena completed her studies in History of Art, Fine Art and Restoration in Valencia before settling in the West of Ireland.

Elena’s paintings represent various themes, though they focus mainly on landscapes. She represents her surroundings with a technical skill and use of color which captures our imagination.

Mariez was born in Denmark and raised in Mexico and Spain. She
lived in different countries before graduating in Fine Art with honours at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, Ireland. The feeling of being an outsider is expressed in artworks showing a distorted reality. The artist approaches the painting as an object, and rage catalyses compositions that have been torn apart and built up again. The use of mixed media applied in successive layers reveals the conflict of the artist and the painting freeing itself from it.

Ruby Wallis is an award winning artist who recently completed her PhD in Fine Art Practice at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin. She also has an MA in Documentary Photography from the University of South Wales. In 2013 she was nominated for the Prix Pictet Award and won first prize at The Claremorris Open Exhibition. Wallis was selected for Belfast Exposed Futures and is preparing for a solo show in 2016. She lectures in Visual Culture at Griffith College, Pulse College and The Burren College of Art.