Winter Exhibition

Gallery opening hours are Tuesday – Saturday 11am-4pm

Our Winter Exhibition brings together the work of the following artists:

Ann Kavanagh, a visual artist originally from Kilkenny.  Ann works across the mediums of photography and printmaking and is a studio member of Graphic and Black Church Print Studios. Ann has participated in residencies at other print studios and has exhibited nationally and internationally. In 2023 she received the Ceide Ladle award at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation First Biennial Exhibition International Open. Kavanagh’s work is an abstract interpretation of her world including her emotions. Lines represent the constant pattern of her movement through the environment. She is fascinated by what lines represent, the significance of erasing a line is her actual physical movement, that forms an obscure image of place. The spaces she occupies or passes through are represented by blocks of monochromatic colour, reduced to contemporary abstract forms. The existence of composition and form is the basic framework of these structural prints.

Bairbre Murray is an emerging artist who works mostly in oils.   She likes to paint on canvas and on paper textured with gesso and recently she has begun using chalk pastels also.  The work in this exhibition is part of an ongoing exploration of our identity as islanders and contains pieces in both media.   This in turn is part of an ongoing project around family memory and hereditary, based on photographs and stories, for which she received an Arts Council Agility Award.   Bairbre is also a member of Artnet DLR and exhibits with this group regularly.

Margaret McLoughlin is a Dublin based artist who finds inspiration in the landscape of Ireland. She explores the Wicklow and Leitrim boglands and the seascape in Clontarf near her home. She works in etching, photography and painting. She walks every day and loves to explore tiny moments of a change of light, of a branch swaying, for the atmosphere of a place or weather, observed in initially drawing and then transformed into a print. McLoughlin is longtime member in the Black Church Print Studio. She has exhibited in the Royal Academy Summer Show, London 2019, the Royal Hibernian Academy and has had solo shows in the Original Print Gallery, Dublin. She is represented in the collections of the Arts Council, the Ark, the Contemporary Irish Art Society, and the Office of Public Works. She won the Vocavio Print Award in 2019, and is a past winner in the RDS Taylor award, and in the first and second Irish Mini print exhibitions. Commissions include The Radisson Hotel, The Ark and Vocavio.

Geoff O’Keeffe initially trained in Fine Art Painting under the tutelage of Sean Mc Sweeney and John O’Leary.  He has worked in Art Education both at second and third level settings and subsequently has worked as a theatre practitioner, where he has directed for theatre extensively, facilitated theatre workshops for both actors and directors and adjudicated on the amateur drama circuit. His artistic practice from the mid-2000s to 2020 was chiefly devoted to theatre. The global pandemic allowed him the opportunity to return to making paintings. His practice as a visual artist is informed by his work as a theatre maker, where he is concerned with the telling of stories, the creating of atmospheres and capturing a sense of place. In 2023, he was one of the recipients of The John Richardson French Residency Award, supported by Hambly and Hambly Gallery in association with Le Centre Culturel. His work is held in private and public collections in Ireland an internationally. He is a member of Visual Artists Ireland.

Nancy Previs is a visual artist whose practice is informed by observation and interpretation of nature’s forms, textures, and tones as found in both rural and urban settings. Fascinated by subtleties in light and colour, and by nature’s unique movements and patterns, she draws inspiration from nature’s ability to generate beauty from what seem spontaneous and random processes. Connecting with these processes – the life force of the landscape – and striving to reflect nature’s quiet yet startling beauty, she makes prints, paintings, and photographs on paper and textiles. Her mixed media works reflect intimate observation and studied interpretation in response to nature’s process of resilience and renewal.  Sustainability and environmental awareness are both integral to her practice. Nurturing a deep respect for and connection with the natural world, she has adopted greener painting and printmaking techniques (including solarplate etching using sunlight, linocut and Mokuhanga). During residencies in the USA and Wales, she expanded her knowledge in greener printmaking processes. Nancy is a member of Graphic Studio Dublin and Visual Artists Ireland. Her work has been exhibited in group shows in Ireland, the USA and the UK. She has had solo exhibitions in NYC, Washington DC and Dublin.

Scarlet Short is a visual artist, working largely in the medium of photography and filmmaking. She is interested in experimental practices and has always incorporated a mixed media approach within her art. The work she has chosen to exhibit aligns with her experimental style, which she has applied to the abstract presentation of her photography. Her exhibited work focuses on the body, its relation to movement and stillness, and how this can be captured on film. Her documentary Dancing with My Mother, 2023 her most recent film featuring dancer, Claudine Short. The film embodies this idea of movement and stillness, focusing on dancing as a process to create mental stillness. Scarlet’s photographic work has been exhibited twice with Dublin University Photography Association as well as this Scarlet exhibited at Dlr Mill Theatre with Console in April of this year, Scarlet’s art has featured in literary and arts journals including Icarus and JoLT.