The RDS Visual Art Awards is the most important platform for visual art graduates in Ireland. It has a very important social impact to artists and the country’s cultural industry as it provides substantial funding to arts programming. The Awards also create a high-end curated exhibition opportunity with a significant prize fund this year of over €40,000, as well as vital exposure for emerging visual artists as they move into early professional practice.
This year’s curator is Colin Martin RHA Head of School, a dynamic learning environment that supports art students to build the skillset and material knowledge to make creative and exciting art for today. Martin will also design the exhibition space with this year’s exhibiting artists.
10 exhibiting artists that have been meticulously selected to exhibit this year and they have been chosen from some of the best BA & MA visual art graduates from all over Ireland, having gone through a rigorous competitive two-stage process to get their work into this much sought show for emerging artists. The 2024 exhibition will be embedded into the RHA Gallery’s core programming as it runs from 22 November, 2024 to 18 January, 2025 – giving further opportunity to the artists’ work to be seen at an internationally renowned gallery space and for a proper run period of time that gives impetus to spotlight their work holistically.
This year’s team of independent curators appointed by the RDS to conduct the initial longlisting process for the 2024 RDS Visual Art Awards included Paul McAree, Eamonn Maxwell, Rayne Booth, Sarah McAuliffe and Benjamin Stafford. They visited end of year degree shows in art colleges across the country – and between them they longlisted 120 artists who were invited to apply for the 2024 RDS Visual Art Awards. Completed applications from these emerging artists were then assessed by the RDS Visual Art Awards judging panel who shortlisted them down to 56 candidates, before selecting the final 10 artists for inclusion in this year’s exhibition.
From the shortlist, the judging panel decide on who will showcase their work in the 2024 RDS Visual Art Awards exhibition at the RHA Gallery. The 2024 panel includes: Mary McCarthy (Chair of the 2024 VAA panel and Director, Crawford Gallery), Eithne Jordan (RHA Nominated Judge), Janice Hough (IMMA Nominated Judge), Gary Coyle (National Gallery of Ireland Nominated Judge) and Irish artist Colin Martin (Professional Artist & 2024 RDS VAA’s Exhibition Curator).
Each of the ten exhibiting artists will be in with the chance to win one of the five prizes on offer including: The RDS Taylor Art Award (€10,000); R.C. Lewis-Crosby Award (€5,000); RDS Members’ Art Fund Award (€5,000); the RDS Mason Hayes & Curran LLP Centre Culturel Irlandais Residency Award, in Paris (€8,000 value); The RHA Graduate Studio Award (€7,500 value); and finally a new Award – the RDS Graphic Studio Dublin Emerging Visiting Artist Award (€5,000 value); Winners will be announced on the opening night of the show (22 November).
Colin Martin RHA , Artist and 2024 RDS Visual Art Awards Exhibition Curator said:
The RDS Visual Arts Awards is an exciting and dynamic exhibition that brings together the innovative and relevant art practices of an emerging generation of visual artists, where platform, practice and audience meet. The alchemy of these interwoven strands has a storied history and has forged the careers of many of the todays leading voices in contemporary visual arts from established artists Dorothy Cross and James Hanley to new voices in contemporary art such as Elaine Hoey and Bassam Al Sabah. This is a rigorous all-Island selection process and I am delighted to act as curator for this year’s iteration to be held at the prestigious RHA.
Andrew Power, Chairperson of the RDS Foundation Board said;
The RDS is delighted to partner with the RHA for the annual RDS Visual Art Awards. Ten emerging artists from across the island of Ireland will exhibit their work in the RHA galleries this winter. This year the RDS Foundation can announce that the prize fund is €48,000 and continues to represent the most significant series of awards for emerging visual artists in Ireland. The RDS Foundation is committed to the advancement of excellence in; the Arts, Agriculture, Enterprise, Equestrianism, and Science.
The RDS Visual Art Awards is a substantial and pivotal Arts project that supports emerging professional artists in Ireland. It exists to support their work at this vitally important moment in their careers culminating in a long-running exhibition at IMMA this year which enables them to professionally present their work with an opportunity of winning one of five awards on offer to help launch their future work in 2025.
2024 RDS Visual Art Awards exhibitors are:
AVA LOWRY
Ava is graduated from TUS Limerick School of Art and Design in 2024. She is a visual artist working primarily in painting. Her 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 through the work. 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 detail 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 female-centric naked works aim to both work in and against the traditional nude genre and ideas of conventional viewership. Conveying identity and queerness, while questioning viewership, voyeurism and the male gaze.
CAHAL O’CONNELL / MISS MARY JANE
Derry City artist, Cahal graduated from North-West Regional College, before progressing onto study at The Belfast School of Art at Ulster University. As a practicing visual artist, musician and cabaret performer, he is currently exploring the intersection of identity, gender, sexuality and visual iconography through his work.
Utilising a secondary lens based medium which Cahal can visually communicate through, whilst capturing his primary practice rooted within performance. At the core of his artistic practice is a deep connection to both sexuality and sexual expression, and the utilisation of his personal drag alias; Miss Mary Jane, as an art form, which serves as a constant and continuous source of creative inspiration and outlet for Cahal.
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, visual iconography, and both socio-politics and pop cultures.
As a musician, self-composition and producing has become a core factor in his work. Often initially inspired and fuelled by musical references, he develops ideas supported by his fine art education and references drawn from cinematography, pop-culture and music, utilising both self-production and creative collaboration to produce and direct both lens based and live performance pieces.
CLAIRE RITCHIE
Claire graduated with a BA Honours in Fine Art from Belfast School of Art 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, she creates structures and wall-mounted assemblages that can push beyond the boundaries of two-dimensionality. Through this process, the conventional materials of painting are unraveled, 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, and the pictorial function of painting is abandoned in favour of an exploration of its “objectness.”
FIONN TIMMINS
Waterford artist, Fionn graduated from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design in 2024. He works primarily with sculpture and uses video and sound to support this practice. His work considers our relationship with the landscape by addressing and reinterpreting references to Irish folklore and ancient Irish megalithic forms, such as 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. The journey became a vital role in the story 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, and the sounds and smells of the landscape around him. This durational performance, and the film and sound work that resulted, aimed to foster a deeper sense of connection with landscape and with Ireland’s ancient past.
Fionn’s research is informed by the writings of late Irish philosopher John Moriarty who drew his inspiration from the landscape, and 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.
HEATHER HUGHES
Heather graduated from the National College of Art and Design in 2024 with a first class honours BA in Fine Art. She is a multidisciplinary artist working in 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.
Her work entitled, 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
Keara is a 22 year-old visual media artist with Cerebral Palsy. She graduated from Ulster University’s Belfast School of Art in BA (Hons) Photography with Video, earning First Class Honours. She is of Filipino and Northern Irish descent, though she was born and raised in Canada.
Her work is influenced by her personal experiences; dealing with 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.
KYLE FAIRBANKS
Kyle completed his BA in Fine Art at the Atlantic Technological University, Sligo in 2024. He is a visual artist working in Fine Art and sculpture. He has developed his own unique and quirky animated style of drawing. Kyle illustrates buildings and structures in an animated way as he likes to distort images and exaggerate them. He uses a mixture of different mediums such as acrylics, inks, alcohol pens and pencils.
Recently, Kyle has explored recreating a drawing of his titled “Midnight Diner” in a 3D art from. He has created a humorous nostalgic world of wonder using recycled cardboard, styrofoam, wood, paper and acrylic paints. The earthy browns and the warm naturalist palette of colours create a calming world away from our turbulent reality. This large-scale comic book scene of a futuristic world has its own language which Kyle has created. This world has its own little creatures. This heightened comic world offers young and old an escape from our troubles and tough times to a lighter animated side of life. Kyle hopes that his art helps develop our imagination to look to the world beyond. Kyles creative imagination has led him to develop his own world.
MARY MADELEINE MC CARROLL
Mary graduated with a BA Honors Degree in Fine Art Media from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, 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, 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 with backwards feet and disjointed bodies. These lost and giddy figures epitomise the enduring spirit of loss inflicted by colonialism.
SORCHA BROWNING
Sorcha is a graduate of TU Dublin School of Creative Arts, Sherkin Island. She is a multi-disciplinary artist that works across mediums such as 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 as 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
STELL DE BURCA
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. They use their skills in traditional oil painting alongside comic book/storyboarding elements 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 and offers a fresh perspective on a frequently misunderstood community.
In this series we follow the process of them transitioning, condensed into the time span of getting ready in the morning to highlight the complexity of even the most menial tasks. While also illustrating their desire to not be perceived as they battle with body dysphoria, shown by their choice of baggy clothes and a balaclava to cover their face. They capture 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.
ABOUT THE RDS FOUNDATION:
Since its inception in 1731, the RDS has been dedicated to a mission to see Ireland thrive culturally and economically. The RDS Foundation is the way the RDS realises that mission today. For 290 years the RDS has responded to the needs and priorities of Ireland, addressing gaps in the development of our culture and economy and have helped shape the country. The RDS is focused on a long-term vision for Ireland and five key areas underpin its work: agriculture, the arts, enterprise, equestrianism and science. The RDS harnesses people’s energy and ideas, identifying the needs within each area and bringing momentum and scale to fulfil those needs. Through this, the organisation helps to develop and nurture long-lasting positive impact in Irish society.
The RDS has a proud history of supporting the arts and was central to the establishment of several of our national cultural institutions. The RDS Arts Programme today provides significant financial support, as well as performance, studio, residency and exhibition opportunities to artists starting out in their professional careers in the areas of visual art, craft and classical music
Images: 01. Sorcha Browning, Eden, Image courtesy of the artist.
02. Keara Simonsen, Still from Kapuluan, Image courtesy of the artist.
03. Ava Lowry, Wrapping II, Image courtesy of the artist.
04. Cahal O’Connell/Miss Mary Jane, Backstage Bunny #2, Image courtesy of the artist.
o5. Claire Ritchie, The Mutterer, Image courtesy of the artist.
06. Fionn Timmins, Ciorcal na nDéise, Image courtesy of the artist.
07. Heather Hughes, i can be your dancing girl, Image courtesy of the artist.
08. Mary Madeleine McCarroll, Blackboard 3: Unnamed Fragments from the Douendom, Image courtesy of the artist.
09. Stell De Burca, Make your Transition, Image courtesy of the artist.
10. Kyle Fairbanks, Midnight diner, Image courtesy of the artist.
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