The event is free and open to the public, but booking is essential. Tickets can be reserved online HERE
Sean Lynch was awarded the Arts Council’s Oliver Dowling Visual Arts Bursary Award 2025, and this lecture comes as a result of this award. This one-time bursary was established to honour Oliver Dowling’s legacy as an esteemed colleague, friend and mentor to many artists, and to acknowledge his enormous contribution and legacy to the visual arts in Ireland.
The lecture, mediated from Lynch’s own relationship with Oliver and conversations with those in Ireland and worldwide whose practices and exhibitions were supported by him, aims to highlight the ways artists continue to take up the mantle of progressive art within the complexities of today’s creative communities and economies.
Commenting, Sean Lynch said:
“As art from Ireland continues to find new narratives, purpose and agency, both local and global, it becomes all the more urgent to acknowledge how this energy has arisen, and the tireless support for art given by a person such as Oliver. I hope that this lecture at the RHA helps to continue his legacy into new and unexpected terrains”.
About Oliver Dowling Oliver Dowling continually placed artists at the centre of his life’s work as a gallerist, curator and with the Arts Council for over six decades. His contribution to the arts in Ireland is remembered for its effects on the arts practices of generations of artists and profile of the visual arts in Ireland and internationally. From introducing Joseph Beuys to Ireland and running Oliver Dowling Gallery to his subsequent work as a senior figure in funding for the visual arts and as independent adviser, his approach to making new pathways for artwork to be made, seen and understood continues to be felt in the liveliness of ideas and ambitions of artists and curators. Oliver Dowling died in 2024.
About Sean Lynch Sean Lynch has held fellowships and been a visiting professor at universities and colleges in the United Kingdom, United States and Canada, and is a graduate of the Stadelschule, Frankfurt. He represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale of Art and solo exhibitions of his sculptures, installations and videos include the Edinburgh Art Festival, Henry Moore Institute, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Royal Hibernian Academy, Rose Art Museum, Modern Art Oxford and Hugh Lane Gallery and in University Square, Melbourne. He is part of Askeaton Contemporary Arts in County Limerick and is represented by the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery.
About the Arts Council The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon is the national agency for funding, developing and promoting the arts in Ireland. It works to ensure that the arts are valued and central to Irish life. Through advocacy, investment and partnership, the Arts Council supports artists, arts organisations and communities to engage with and enjoy the arts. The Arts Council was established in 1951 and operates under the Arts Act 2003. For more information, visit www.artscouncil.ie.
Image: Oliver Dowling, 1977, Photograph by Joel Fisher, Courtesy the artist and National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL), NCAD, Dublin.
