Irish Tatler

Artists of the future: these are emerging talents to add to your art collection now

The best of Ireland’s emerging visual artists will showcase their work at the prestigious RDS Visual Art Awards exhibition, beginning on October 21. Partner content with RDS Visual Art Awards

  • October 7, 2022
The RDS Visual Art Awards run from October 21 to 29 in Dublin’s RDS Concert Hall, where 13 of the best emerging visual artists in Ireland will exhibit their work

The RDS will be presenting its renowned Visual Art Awards exhibition at Dublin’s RDS Concert Hall from October 21 to 29 2022, delivering an unmissable snapshot of the up-and-coming artists to watch.

A key platform for visual art graduates in Ireland, the awards provide a curated exhibition opportunity and a prize fund of over €30,000. It offers the public a chance to discover emerging visual artists – and future stars – as they move into early professional practice.

This year’s exhibition will take place in a purpose-built gallery space designed by curator Aideen Barry. Selected via a competitive two-stage process, the 13 exhibiting artists are some of the best BA & MA visual art graduates from all over Ireland. Each artist will be in with the chance to win one of five prestigious prizes, with the winners being announced on opening night.

Aisling Phelan

National College of Art & Design

Aisling is a multi-disciplinary visual artist and writer, working across 3D animation, photography, video, virtual reality, performance and live interactive technologies. Her work is mainly concerned with the exploration of the digital self and the potential for this to further our understanding of our physical selves. ‘Dual Reality’ is an interactive installation that explores the merging of our online and offline identities.

aislingphelan.cargo.site; aebphelan@gmail.com

Aisling Phelan is a multi-disciplinary visual artist and writer. Her work ‘Dual Reality’ is an interactive installation that explores the merging of our online and offline identities

Eden Munroe

TU Dublin School of Creative Arts

Eden’s work addresses the intersection of bodily engagements and material entanglements, through the language of sculpture and installation. ‘Plasma and Ore’ is a collection of dispersed sculptural assemblages, resting on the brink of action. The material elements — metal, clay, liquid and plastic — exist in clusters, forming a constellation of dormant systems.

Instagram: @edenmunroe.va; edenmunroe13@gmail.com

Eden Munroe’s work ‘Plasma and Ore’ is a collection of dispersed sculptural assemblages, resting on the brink of action

Emily Unsworth

SETU Waterford

Emily works primarily in sculpture, painting and photography and is concerned with exploring perceptions of the human form. She investigates this through abstract concepts of skin rather than a realistic version of self. Her sculptures are disembodied and carefully constructed to drape, fold and sag against the concealed armatures.

Instagram: @emilyunsworthvisualartist; emilyunsworth96@gmail.com

Emily Unsworth works primarily in sculpture, painting and photography and is concerned with exploring perceptions of the human form

Francine Marquis

Burren College of Art

Drawing from her early years of relocating, and later years spent living in and working on an old Victorian home, Francine has developed a deep interest in how personal connections fasten themselves to architectural spaces and their features. With meticulously sculpted, cast, built, and fractured installations, Francine explores personal memories layered within the architecture of place and interior spaces.

itsokaynobigdeal.com; francinemarquis@gmail.com

Francine Marquis explores personal memories layered within the architecture of place and interior spaces

Kat Lalor

TU Dublin School of Creative Arts

Kat’s work is conceptually concerned with the multi-facets of Queer Intelligibility and gender, fuelled by their academic interest in Queer Theory and Gender Studies. Inspired by ‘Queer Art: Freak Theory’, a contemporary text by Renate Lorenz, Kat has strived to develop a visual language around Queer Gender using methods derived from Drag. This visual language aims to un-do signifiers of binary gender, and display broader representations of non-binary gender.

Instagram: @katlalor.va; katlalorva@gmail.com

Kat Lalor’s work is concerned with the multi-facets of Queer Intelligibility and gender, and they strive to develop a visual language around Queer Gender using methods derived from Drag

Lucy Peters

IADT Dún Laoghaire

A graduate of the Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dun Laoghaire with a background in the fashion industry, Lucy has become increasingly concerned with the vast volumes of mass-produced clothes. Her exploration of overconsumption has encompassed research into the practices of fashion retailers as well as the strategies that have been developed by charities to manage huge warehouses full of discarded, and ultimately worthless, fast fashion clothing. All material used in Lucy’s work is found, recycled or donated.

Instagram: @lucky_lucy_peters; Lucyp.21@gmail.com

With a background in the fashion industry, Lucy Peters’ work explores the overconsumption of mass-produced clothes, which facilitates her research into the practices of fashion retailers

Michelle Malone

TU Dublin School of Creative Arts

Michelle’s practice is based on her experience growing up in a variety of social housing systems in inner-city Dublin, mainly Oliver Bond flats. Her multi-disciplinary installations comprise sculpture, imagemaking, oral histories, audio, and text. By bringing together materials, objects, images, and stories in an installation context, Michelle’s work aims to create embodied empathy with subjects that bring systems of poverty into discussion and that also champion those working-class histories.

michellemalone.net; mm.michelle.malone@gmail.com

Michelle Malone’s practice is based on her experience growing up in a variety of social housing systems in inner-city Dublin. She aims to bring systems of poverty into discussion and champion working-class histories

Myfanwy Frost-Jones

MTU Crawford College of Art & Design

Working as an artist and oyster farmer based in the west of Ireland, Myfanwy examines the complicated relationships between land, labour and ecology in a rural space. Her work investigates the dark histories of the past whilst acknowledging the picturesque allure of the rural landscape. Her work layers conflicting histories of colonialism and invasion with current issues of biodiversity and coastal erosion, combining photography and moving image installation with the use of text to create a poetic narrative.

myfanwyfrost-jones.com; myfanwy.frostjones@gmail.com

Myfanwy Frost-Jones’ work examines the complicated relationships between land, labour and ecology in a rural space. She combining photography and moving image installation with the use of text to create a poetic narrative

Orla Comerford

National College of Art & Design

Orla is a multidisciplinary visual artist working across the mediums of video, audio, photography and woodwork. The exploration of glitch art and the question of who gets to see in high resolution are central themes in her practice. Her deliberate distortion, degradation and corruption of videos and images in order to create impressions, plays into these themes. She is a visually impaired artist, whose aesthetic is informed by the fact that what she sees, and how she encounters the world, is a distortion in its own sense.

orlacomerford.ie; orla.anne.c@gmail.com

Orla Comerford is a multidisciplinary visual artist working across the mediums of video, audio, photography and woodwork. She is a visually impaired artist, whose aesthetic is informed by the fact that what she sees is a distortion in its own sense

Sadhbh Mowlds

Southern Illinois University Carbondale (USA)

Sadhbh’s work straddles the line between hyper-realism and surrealism to create absurd yet recognisable realities that challenge prevalent and destructive social constructs. Sadhbh’s fixation on the human ability to contemplate is at the core of her pursuit, which challenges the absurdity of the beliefs, behaviours and perceptions of our species. Working in an array of materials, most notably glass and silicone, Sadhbh creates grotesquely beautiful and questionably life-like work that beg the viewer’s contemplation

sadhbhmowlds.com; sadhbhmowlds@hotmail.com

Sadhbh Mowlds works with an array of materials, most notably glass and silicone, to create grotesquely beautiful and questionably life-like work that beg the viewer’s contemplation

Sinead Mc Cormick

TU Dublin School of Creative Arts - West Cork Islands

Sinead works with a variety of media, primarily focusing on the creation of sculptural forms and site-specific installations, which often integrate alternative technologies, sonic experimentations and organic material. In Sinead’s practice, she aims to bring together environmental contexts with embodied modes of storytelling to position islands and rurality as urgent sites of relevance for our shared responses to climate inaction and change.

sineadmccormick.com; mccormicksinead@gmail.com

Sinead Mc Cormick aims to bring together environmental contexts with embodied modes of storytelling to position islands and rurality as urgent sites of relevance for our shared responses to climate inaction and change

Szymon Minias

SETU Wexford School of Art & Design

‘Collateral Play’ is a body of work exploring different faces of power. Szymon’s use of the self-portrait is divided into several rudimentary studies celebrating the euphoric states of power brokering. Szymon sees painting largely as an unfolding process of development — a study of abstraction of the real, where every element should have a life of its own when ruthlessly singled out. His fixations pay attention to rhythm, to the various angles of attack from which a painting can be observed to the constant re-examination of the work’s presence.

Instagram: @szymon.minias; szymonminias@gmail.com

Szymon Minias’ work, ‘Collateral Play’, explores different faces of power. He sees painting largely as an unfolding process of development, where every element should have a life of its own

Venus Patel

TU Dublin School of Creative Arts

Venus’s practice draws from her theatre and acting background, mixing performance and experimental film. Her work usually stems from her own experiences, rising from questions she has about the world, herself, and how the two interact. As a queer person of colour, she has constantly been othered by society and it is therefore important for her voice to be heard outside of the white heteronormative society she is so forcefully suppressed by. Venus’s work acts as a way for her to process her emotions, which manifest in a complex and dynamic way.

Instagram: @venusart666; venuspatel1400@gmail.com

Venus Patel’s work stems from her own experiences, rising from questions she has about the world, herself, and how the two interact

Aideen Barry Curator of the 2022 RDS Visual Arts Awards:

Aideen Barry is a practising visual artist based in Ireland but with an international profile. Her means of expression are interchangeable, incorporating performance, sculpture, film and experimental lens-based media. She often collaborates with artists and communities to manifest her multi-diverse socio-political works. In 2020 she was elected to the Royal Hibernian Academy as an ARHA member. She is a member of Aosdána and lectures in several universities and schools of visual art in Ireland, the US and Europe.

The curator of the exhibition, Aideen Barry, is a practising visual artist based in Ireland with an international profile. She is a member of Aosdána and lectures in several universities and schools of visual art in Ireland, the US and Europe

The 2022 RDS Visual Art Awards exhibition will take place in the RDS Concert Hall from October 21-29 and will be open from 10.30am-5.30pm daily. There will be exhibition tours led by curator Aideen Barry. For more see www.rds.ie/visualart