RDS Visual Art Awards 2025 Catalogue

2025

Charlie Dineen Susanne Horsch Lily Mannion Clara McSweeney Thaís Muniz Éile Medb Ní Fhiaich Vicky Ochala Billie Adele O’Regan Anastassia Varabiova Charlie (Lauréline) Yris VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

Winners will be announced on 08 December and listed here winner of the r.c. lewis-crosby award winner of the rds mason hayes & curran llp centre culturel irlandais residency award winner of the rds members’art fund award winner of the rha graduate studio award winner of the taylor art trust award and rds & graphic studio dublin emerging visiting artist award winner of the dean group award winner of THE SLANE CASTLE RESIDENCY

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The RDS in partnership with the RHA Gallery

presents an exhibition curated by Niamh O’Malley.

The exhibition will run from Friday 21 November 2025 to Sunday 25 January 2026.

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

CONTENTS

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Special Thanks Exhibition Floorplan Welcome from the RHA by Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh Introduction by Patrick T. Murphy Note From the Curator by Niamh O’Malley the artists

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Charlie Dineen Susanne Horsch Lily Mannion Clara McSweeney Thaís Muniz Éile Medb Ní Fhiaich Vicky Ochala Billie Adele O’Regan Anastassia Varabiova Charlie (Lauréline) Yris

18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36

2025 Curator and Shortlisted Artists photo 2025 Participating Colleges Longlisted Artists’ Video RDS Craft Awards Exhibitions The 2025 RDS Arts Awards 2025 Acknowledgements

38 40 44 46 48 50

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

The RDS and the RHA would like to thank each of the artists for their vision and creativity. The exhibition is curated by invited artist Niamh O’Malley, supported

by Karen Phillips, RDS Arts Programme Manager and Eliza McCormack, RDS Arts Programme Executive.

2025 Exhibiting Artists Charlie Dineen Susanne Horsch Lily Mannion Clara McSweeney Thaís Muniz Éile Medb Ní Fhiaich Vicky Ochala Billie Adele O’Regan Anastassia Varabiova Charlie (Lauréline) Yris

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2025 Judging Panel

2025 College Curators

Rachel Joynt Christina Kennedy Sarah McAuliffe Patrick Murphy (Chair) Niamh O’Malley (Curator)

Viviana Checchia Rachael Gilbourne Paul McAree Davey Moor Aoife Ruane

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

FLOORPLAN foyer

THAÍS MUNIZ

LONGLISTED ARTISTS’ VIDEO tony ryan gallery

CHARLIE DINEEN CHARLIE (LAURÉLINE) YRIS VICKY OCHALA ÉILE MEDB NÍ FHIAICH atrium

BILLIE ADELE O’REGAN SUSANNE HORSCH friends ’ room

LILY MANNION ANASTASSIA VARABIOVA CLARA McSWEENEY

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CLARA McSWEENEY

FRIENDS’ ROOM

ANASTASSIA VARABIOVA

BILLIE ADELE O’REGAN

LILY MANNION

ATRIUM

SUSANNE HORSCH

CHARLIE (LAURÉLINE) YRIS FOYER

VICKY OCHALA

ÉILE MEDB NÍ FHIAICH

THAÍS MUNIZ

TONY RYAN GALLERY

LONGLISTED ARTISTS’ VIDEO ↓

CHARLIE DINEEN

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

Welcome from the RHA

From Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh

Ba mhaith liom fáilte chroíúil a fhearadh romhaibh anseo anocht ag Acadamh Ibeirneach Ríoga. Is mór an onóir dom a bheith libh, mar Uachtarán, ag an ócáid speisialta seo. Is deis iontach é do na healaíontóirí óga atá sa taispeántas seo a gcuid saothar a léiriú anseo in Acadamh, ceann de na dánlanna is tábhachtaí sa tír ó thaobh na healaíne comhaimseartha de.

The RHA are delighted to welcome the RDS Visual Arts Awards to our

galleries. This is the third time we have hosted the Awards: 2021, 2024 and now in the closing months of 2025.

It is appropriate that the Academy which comprises of the most recognised and established of contemporary artists cherishes and encourages these

graduating artists as they leave their educational institutes and embark on their career.

The RDS Visual Arts Awards exhibition offers the most comprehensive and inclusive showcase of the best of graduating students selected from all of the art colleges on the island of Ireland. Utilising the depth of experience of current practicing curators, these individuals are dispatched to review

each art college’s final year exhibition and provide a selection of potential

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“The RDS Visual Art Awards exhibition offers the most comprehensive and inclusive showcase of the best graduating students from all art colleges on the island of Ireland.”

candidates for inclusion. A further distillation is then undertaken by a different curatorial group to compose the final selection that appears in this exhibition.

My fellow Academician, the brilliant artist, Niamh O’Malley has undertaken the task of curating this exhibition. She acts as both mentor and curator to these graduates ensuring the best and indeed the most elegant presentation of their work in the challenging spaces of our galleries.

The Royal Dublin Society and the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts are both bound by their Charters to better the arts in Ireland. These Awards are a

marvellous occasion for us to collaborate together to promote and celebrate that civil responsibility.

Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh

(President, Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts)

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

An Introduction

From Patrick T. Murphy (2025 Judging Panel Chair)

2025 RDS Visual Art Awards Judging Panel Members:

Rachel Joynt, Christina Kennedy, Sarah McAuliffe and Niamh O’Malley (Curator).

The RDS Visual Arts Awards offers one of the most comprehensive annual assessments of graduate work, bachelor and master’s level, undertaken on a 32 county basis. Five curators divided the different colleges and scrutinised the degree exhibitions in their assigned institutions.

We acknowledge, Viviana Checchia, Rachael Gilbourne, Paul McAree, Davey Moor and Aoife Ruane who took their considerable experience of curating exhibitions and sought to identify students that displayed a real promise of pursuing the demanding career of art-making. We are indebted to those curators for their hard work and diligence.

These longlisted proposals were then reviewed by the final panel which consists of

individuals nominated by the National Gallery of Ireland, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Royal Hibernian Academy and the RDS. A fifth panellist is an independent nomination and usually a practising artist.

Each of us was individually tasked to review all of the 110 selected submissions and reduce them further, not an easy task. Our findings were then co-ordinated by the

super efficient RDS staff and we were presented with the final list of 112 artists from whom, via advocacy and discussion we chiselled out 10 artists to be included in this year’s presentation.

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One of the real excitements of the RDS Visual Arts Awards is that the exhibition is curated by an established artist. And to date that forms quite a list of artists

beginning with Nick Miller and followed by Alice Maher, Aideen Barry, Elaine Hoey, Vera Klute and last year Colin Martin. This year Niamh O’Malley, an extraordinary artist, who has represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale and regularly exhibits

across Europe leads the charge. Her task is more than conceiving and installing the layout of the exhibition in the variety of spaces in the RHA but also involves

a mentorship and connection that should advantage those students involved for years to come.

Though participation in itself is an honour, there is also the serious matter of the

accompanying prizes — a total fund of up to €60,000 consisting of the RDS Taylor

Art Award (€10,000), the R.C. Lewis-Crosby Award (€5,000) the RDS Members Fund

(€5,000), the Dean Group Award (€10,000), and there are three studio awards (valued

at €20,500). The Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris offers a three-month residency with the support of Mason Hayes and Curran, The Slane Castle Residency offers a month

long residency and the RHA offers a one-year studio residency with access to all RHA masterclasses and workshops.

And finally, the RDS Graphic Studio Award offering the awardee the opportunity to

work with master printer at the studio. In addition, each artist receives an exhibition fee of €500 for their participation in the awards exhibition.

I would like to thank my fellow members of the Judging Panel, Christina Kennedy, Curator at Irish Museum of Modern Art, Rachel Joynt, artist, Sarah McAuliffe, Curator at the National Gallery of Ireland, and Niamh O’Malley, artist and the

exhibition’s Curator. Our collective gratitude to the team at the RDS for their supreme professionalism, Karen Phillips and Eliza McCormack who make the process not only seamless but enjoyable.

Thank you to all of the artists we have featured, to my fellow panelists and to the brilliant staff, officers and members of the RDS — nostri plena laboris.

Patrick T. Murphy

(Director, Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts)

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

For Our Attention

Curator’s Note by Niamh O’Malley

To be foolhardy enough to undertake the life of an artist you have to know that it matters — that in our present moment, in a complicated world, doing ‘something’ — producing, clearing a space for a meaningful encounter, is a form of action. These are some such brave souls — daring to share, to provoke, to present for our attention and expansion, their objects, images and tales.

This group exhibition of new voices, is not a site of didacticism, where we are told what and how to think — or where you can rely on the comfort of ideas already known — but a place of challenge and undoing, joy and discovery.

The context that these emerging artists are ‘making’ within, is one of

precarity, from inadequate housing and studios, to a damaged planet. Their works speak of a valid unease with the current shape of our spaces and

reveal how our walls, bedrooms and landscapes are speaking — or crying, histories and desires. There is a palpable appeal for a return to the body,

to the power of touch — from the glass screen we hold in our hand to the

softness of cloth, thread and wool or the coldness of steel. Plastic is pulled

taught and grounded with clay, the shape of a kite lifts arm and eye towards both sky and the future.

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“This group exhibition of new voices, is not a site of didacticism, where we are told what and how to think — or where you can rely on the comfort of ideas already known — but a place of challenge and undoing, joy and discovery.“

A committed panel of curators and artists deliberated at length to arrive at

this shortlist that includes artists like Charlie (Lauréline) Yris, who has used a process of photographic and video documentation to both compile and

reimagine a list of derelict buildings in Limerick. In their work, these buildings shift in our consciousness through the simple placement of a phrase on a ceramic plaque — an ode to home or its possibility.

The building blocks of materials that make a life and a home, from the

functional to the aspirational, the smells and the décor, are also evident in

the work of Vicky Ochala, who presents a full-scale steel frame of a room in

her childhood apartment, where her grandparents still live. Her video, Come, let me tell you something (2025) blends archival footage of communist media propaganda with her own recordings.

In Now Listen Closely, Fellow Humans (2024), Clara McSweeney responds to the peculiarities of three vacant buildings in Dublin city centre. Monologues spoken by actors are played through speakers in a drainpipe, air

vent and intercom. We are invited to eavesdrop on these recordings, which the artist describes as ‘confessions’, in which the buildings themselves are voicing their deepest fears, anxieties and confusions.

The sense that material realities support and distort our lives, as well as

‘speak’ in their own particular way, is also present in the work of Éile Medb Ní Fhiaich. In her sculptural assemblages, combinations of found and made forms including industrial plastic, metal and foam, connect and

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

Curator’s Note by Niamh O’Malley continued...

entangle with each other via handmade inter-ventions of silicone, ceramic and stuffed fabric. Her works consider material adaptation, support and transformation as they elongate, hold, and rely on each other.

Lily Mannion’s delicate composition, Maybe If (2025), uses resin, steel,

hair and skin cells, as part of her material and linguistic inquiry. This work is

vulnerable in its fears, concerns and overwhelm. It positions its very physical compositions, which also include ceramic, felt and steel, as a new kind of

script — maybe even a spell — to reconnect and to touch, past and future.

The subject of touch is equally present in the work of Anastassia Varabiova as they reflect on the absurdity and odd behaviours of a screen-based lifestyle. Blending dread and humour, their installation, Try Normal Life

Maxxing (2025), combines spirituality and wellness content with marketing footage from sex doll factories and snippets of the artist’s performance.

This physically small yet potent video, played on a caged phone, questions the role of the algorithm in the construction of reality.

In a deliberate negation of the problematics of the digital, Charlie Dineen’s film, The City Beneath Me (2025), casts his analogue camera on the landscape of Kerry, examining ritual, ancestral memory and mythology. This

stark and overt nod to our landscape and heritage summons an empathy of touch and rhythm and reignites a relationship with the physical and divine land.

In a strikingly different but equally beautiful setting, Thaís Muniz’s twochannel work, The Kite Ballet (2024), shows people flying kites in a

semi-barren, white, sandy landscape with blue skies. Contested land

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and environmental issues are spoken directly to and with the wind. Thaís

presents this joyful activity, producing curiosity, community and solidarity by considering ‘play as a revolutionary act’. Alongside Charlie Dineen, she also harnesses indigenous knowledge systems, identity, traditions and ritual, as well as land and climate.

Exploring the physicality of the sensing and evolving human body, Susanne Horsch maps, sews and produces outsize cloths of touch and labour. Swimming in Space (2025) draws from autobiography as well as feminist and

queer theories to realise an immersive installation of enlarged bodily shapes, torsos, breasts, sperm and genitalia as fabric, stitch, dyeing and quilting.

Billie Adele O’Regan flies the flag for the alchemy of painting. Billie describes exaggerated and amorphous bodily forms that sit within histories of horror, sci-fi and the occult. Strange beauty — equally monstrous and compelling — is generated through the messy truth of paint and puddle, brush mark and stain.

These ten innovative artists speak to our time and their concerns, from

housing and ecology to the relationship of our weighty, complicated bodies in both the physical and virtual world. Come, see and attend to these

wonderful fragments of moments and matter — they will do the speaking.

Niamh O’Malley is an artist based in Dublin.

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

CHARLIE DINEEN

Instagram @dineencharlie

Website charliedineen.com

The City Beneath Me (2:56)

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Charlie Dineen is a Dublin-based artist and filmmaker working primarily with multi-format analogue photography and film.

A graduate of Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT) with a First Class Honours BA (Hons) in Photography and Visual Media, his work spans abstract and conceptual approaches, including street

photography, documentary, and self-portraiture.

In his final year at IADT, Charlie introduced moving image into his practice,

culminating in the film The City Beneath Me, the centrepiece of his graduate

exhibition. Recently, he has begun experimenting with Super 8 and 16mm film

— an exploration that has opened an exciting new phase in his creative journey.

Grounded in the tactile processes of analogue photography, Charlie’s evolving film work continues to reflect his enduring fascination with light, materiality,

and the alchemy of image-making.

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

SUSANNE HORSCH

Swimming in Space

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Instagram @susanne_horsch_art

Susanne Horsch is a Swiss installation artist whose practice investigates the complex relationship between mind and body, drawing on feminist, queer, and affect theories to explore how emotions, thoughts, and lived experiences shape both individual and collective identities.

A graduate of Ulster University Belfast with an MFA in Fine Art, she works primarily with textiles and soft sculptures, using them as metaphors for weaving together the often-invisible elements of human experience.

Textiles inform both her physical and conceptual practice, with techniques such as batik serving as a language through which she excavates and

exposes hidden emotions, memories, and personal histories. Reflective

writing is central to her work, offering introspective space that guides her

artistic development while challenging isolated narratives surrounding mental health and emotional labour. Her evolving three-dimensional soft sculptures

function as archives of personal and collective experiences, inviting viewers

to confront intimacy, vulnerability, and shared emotional landscapes, fostering

connection, understanding, and collective healing.

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

LILY MANNION

Instagram @lilymannionartist

Website lilymannionartist.my.canva.site

Maybe If:

Age of Disorder; Over the Barrel; They know me (sampler); Maybe If.

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Lily Mannion is an Irish visual artist whose practice investigates the tensions between the natural world, systems of power, and human intervention.

A graduate of ATU Galway with a First Class Honours BA (Hons.) in Contemporary Art. Her work examines spaces and phenomena that have been lost or altered through systems of exploitation, extraction and control.

Drawing on the legacies of industry, craft, trade, and labour, Lily explores

networks of connectivity, seeking cohesion and order within the apparent

chaos of the world. Her practice is driven by curiosity, often engaging with scientific and mathematical principles, while remaining attuned

to the unknown, the potential, and the questions rather than definitive

answers. Through her work, she interrogates the role of the individual

within complex and uncertain systems, creating visual frameworks that help

process, understand, and navigate the overwhelming forces that shape our

environment and society.

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

CLARA McSWEENEY

Now Listen Closely, Fellow Humans:

Locations; Best till Last (Haymarket House, Smithfield, Dublin 7

— Voiced by Michael T Jr); My Third Floor (17 Talbot Street, North City, Dublin 1 — Voiced by Tree McCaul); A New Urban Future

(Capital Dock Residence, Dublin Docklands, Dublin 2 — Voiced

by Blaithín Ward).

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Instagram @clara_mcsweeney_art

Clara McSweeney is a first-class honours graduate of the MA in Art and Research Collaboration at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology (IADT). During her master’s she was also the ARC-LAB Curatorial Scholar (2023 – 2025). Her scholarship concluded with the curation of a group exhibition titled Liquid Urbanisms at The LAB Gallery in March 2025.

Clara’s research informs both her curatorial and artistic practices, examining pressing social issues in Irish society, including the housing crisis, climate

change, vacant properties, and injustices faced by women. Her current work focuses on the peculiarities of certain vacant spaces in Dublin, exploring

dystopian futures shaped by environmental and social crises and the anthropomorphosis of inanimate objects.

Her process begins with research through observation, discussion, reading,

and mapping, which informs layered historical, speculative, or fictional

narratives. These narratives are realised through performance, sound, writing,

speculative fiction, curation, and the activation of objects. Collaboration

is central to her practice, and she frequently works with other artists and

practitioners to develop projects into cohesive, critical explorations of

contemporary social concerns.

Now Listen Closely, Fellow Humans responds to the peculiarities of three

distinct buildings located in Dublin City. She imagines the experience of

vacancy from the perspective of these buildings. They have each confided to Clara their deepest fears, anxieties and confusions. Using these confessions

she has scripted monologues and, with the help of voice actors, recorded

them for a human audience. My Third Floor speaks from the viewpoint of an

ignored vacant space above a shop on Talbot Street. A New Urban Future is

based on a building in the Docklands, set in a future where the climate crisis

has intensified and flooding has occurred. Best to Last focuses on a state-of-

the-art office block in Smithfield Square that has been left vacant for over

a year.

You are now invited to eavesdrop on these confessions.

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

THAÍS MUNIZ

Instagram @thaismunizthais Website thaismuniz.com

The Kite Ballet (11:51)

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Thaís Muniz is a Brazilian-Irish visual artist and researcher whose multidisciplinary practice explores the intersections of inherited and acquired identities, memory, transit, and inward love.

A graduate of Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology (IADT) with

a Masters of Arts in Art & Research Collaboration (Grade: A), she works across sculpture, installation, performance, film, photography, and community-based

workshops, engaging intimate communal learning processes and reimagining

realities through refusal, dreaming, and personal magic.

Her work examines representations of “otherness” through notions of

blackness and displacement in a postcolonial context, drawing on Black

feminist theory, historical episodes, and embodied art-making. Central to

her practice is the exploration of the ancestral significance of the head (Ori)

in Afro-Atlantic societies, particularly through headwrapping as a system of

non-verbal communication and cultural knowledge, which she activates in

both tactile and performative ways. Through ongoing research projects such

as New Atlantic Triangulations and Turbante-se, Thaís creates participatory

works that foster personal and collective healing, challenge canonical systems

of representation, and open pathways for dialogue, reflection, and connection.

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

ÉILE MEDB NÍ FHIAICH

Ré na gCréatúr Ciúin / The Era of Quiet Creatures: Specimen 003; Specimen 002; Specimen 004; Specimen 008.

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Instagram @eilemedb

Éile Medb Ní Fhiaich is a visual artist whose practice explores the fluid boundaries between species, matter, and imagined futures. A graduate of TU Dublin Grangegorman with a First Class Honours BA Fine Art, she uses a diverse range of materials — from ceramics to pre-existing industrial objects — to create sculptural assemblages that engage materially and spatially.

Her work draws on Donna Haraway’s concept of “speculative fabulation”

and Jane Bennett’s theories of vibrant matter, imagining future landscapes and interspecies relationships in which all entities act as collaborative, interactive forces.

Through the transformative process of making, Éile examines how contrasting materials can generate visual, physical, and conceptual tension. By engaging with speculative futures, her work encourages shifts in perspective, prompting reconsideration of our relationships with the world and challenging

anthropocentric ways of living.

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

VICKY OCHALA

Pęknięty zapis / A Broken Record:

Chodź, opowiem ci coś / Come, let me tell you

something (11:46); Ślad I / Print I; Krzeslo I / Chair I, Miękki Upadek / Soft Collapse; Stół I /Table I, Po Upadku / After the Fall; Krzeslo II / Chair II,

Utrzymane w Napięciu / Held in Tension; Miękkość w Kamieniu/ Softness in Stone; Ślad II / Print II.

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Instagram @vickyochala_va

Vicky Ochala is a contemporary artist whose practice merges the political and the personal through sculpture and film. A graduate of TU Dublin with a First Class Honours Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art, her work responds to her childhood home in a Polish housing block, where her grandparents still reside. She explores how socialist ideology shaped post-Communist brutalist architecture, while documenting the persistence of individuality within standardized spaces.

By incorporating materials and domestic elements sourced from her

grandparents’ apartment, Vicky transforms familiar household objects through casting, screen printing, and structural deconstruction. These

sculptural interventions evoke memory, scarcity, and the passage of time, reimagining the domestic as a site of quiet resistance and adaptation.

Her video Chodź, opowiem ci coś / Come, let me tell you something

juxtaposes archival Communist propaganda with personal interviews and

recordings, exposing the tension between state-imposed narratives and

lived experience. Through these material and cinematic explorations, Vicky

examines the fragility of political, architectural, and familial systems while honouring resilience, personalisation, and the intimate acts of survival

embedded within working-class homes.

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

BILLIE ADELE O’REGAN

Instagram @billieadeleart Website billieadele.com

Marrow Rytes: Dames UnBrydal’d; Cult’yvation; Rott on the Vyne.

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Billie Adele O’Regan is a contemporary artist whose practice celebrates femininity while defiantly challenging patriarchal constraints.

A graduate of MTU Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork, with a First Class Honours BA (Hons) in Fine Art, she creates paintings that explore the grotesque, the monstrous feminine, and the transgressive potential of the female body.

Influenced by the occult, sci-fi and horror aesthetics, and strange beauty

contraptions from past and present, Billie constructs uncanny, suspended realities where amorphous female forms resist containment and confront

systems of control. Her work satirises the chaotic and absurd nature of beauty

as ritual, merging macabre humour, theatricality and visceral materiality to transform painting into a performative and alchemical act of becoming.

Grounded in the belief that the body inhabits the spirit, her practice

engages in an alchemy of paint, flesh, spirit and lived experience, where

paint itself becomes collaborator, a living, shapeshifting vessel of emotion,

transformation and resistance. This work engages with and empathises with

the monstrous, recognising it as a symbol of transmutable power, tenderness

and survival. Through these materially charged worlds, Billie reimagines the

grotesque as liberation itself: fluid, embodied and defiantly alive.

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

ANASTASSIA VARABIOVA

Instagram @anastassiavarabiova

Website anastassiavarabiova.com

Try Normal Life Maxxing:

Better Than a Scroll; aissatsana_hope_doom_

weird_core_edit.mp4 (7:29).

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Anastassia Varabiova is a contemporary artist whose practice explores digital media’s influence on empathy, perception, and social behaviour.

A graduate of the Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dún Laoghaire with a First Class Honours BA (Hons) in Art, they create sculptural, installation, and time-based works that interrogate the absurdities of screen-based living and the algorithmic shaping of reality.

Their work blends dread and humour to examine the social and material impacts of digital technology, incorporating video collages, interactive

sculptures, and live performance. By juxtaposing the virtual and the tactile,

Anastassia encourages reflection on our mediated lives and the evolving relationship between human behaviour and digital culture.

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

CHARLIE (LAURÉLINE) YRIS

Instagram yris.wood.and.clay

Website laurelineyris.com

Don’t Let Me Fall Apart

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Charlie (Lauréline) Yris is a contemporary artist working in ceramics, public space installations, and socially engaged practice. They graduated from the Limerick School of Art and Design (LSAD) in 2025 with a BA (Hons) in Ceramics in Expanding Practice.

Their work explores systemic injustices surrounding housing, the concept

of home, and broader social and environmental issues. Clay is their primary medium, chosen for its permanence and versatility. Their practice blends

traditional craft techniques with contemporary tools such as laser cutting,

3D printing, and digital documentation to amplify the visibility and impact

of their work.

Sustainability, collaboration, and adaptability are central to their practice,

as they work with reclaimed materials, modular designs, and community

engagement to tell stories, spark conversations, and create art that responds to people, places, and urgent social issues.

Their recent project, Don’t Let Me Fall Apart, uses the streets and public spaces as platforms for protest and dialogue. Their handmade ceramic plaques, tiles, and mosaics placed on derelict, vacant and abandoned

buildings confront housing inequities. They draw inspiration from graffiti,

street art, and urban signage. The project was supported by CATU (Community Action Tenants Union) Limerick and informed by interviews with local

residents affected by the housing crisis.

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

2025: Curator with Shortlisted Artists

Left to Right: Anastassia Varabiova Susanne Horsch Charlie Dineen Niamh O’Malley Vicky Ochala Billie Adele O’Regan Éile Medb Ní Fhiaich, Thaís Muniz Lily Mannion Clara McSweeney

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VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

2025: Colleges & Longlisted Artists ATU Galway

IADT Dun Laoghaire

Lily Mannion, BA in Art

Maria Balan, BA in Art

Scott Nokia, BA in Art

Eimear Carvill, BA in Art

Liz Moran, BA in Art

Yana Nungesser, BA in Art

Lorraine Reynolds, BA in Art

Mariola Wiazowska, BA in Art

ATU Sligo Kerrie Lee Gallinagh, BA in Art Cassandra O’Neill, BA in Art

Burren College of Art Aaron Asher, MFA in Studio Art

Róisín Byrne, MFA in Art & Ecology

Noelle Foden-Vencil, MFA in Art & Ecology

Griffith College Dublin Nadia Caimi, BA in Photographic Media

Ines Gomez Fuentes, BA in Photographic Media

Anthony Wilson Setiawan, BA in Photographic Media

Ana Bates, BA in Art

Róise McGagh, BA in Art

Wafaa Mohamed, BA in Art Síofra Ní Bhroin, BA in Art Julia Rose, BA in Art

Bernadette Ryan, BA in Art Ann Stillman, BA in Art

Logan Valentine, BA in Art

Anastassia Varabiova, BA in Art

Charlie Dineen, BA in Photography & Visual Media James Kelly, BA in Photography & Visual Media Kassandre Lojek-Garacia, BA in Photography & Visual Media

Miguel Reis, BA in Photography & Visual Media

MTU Crawford College Cork Aoife Clifford, BA in Fine Art

Rachael O’Keeffe, BA in Fine Art Billie O’Reagan, BA in Fine Art Patrick Penney, BA in Fine Art

Andra Postolache, BA in Fine Art Roisin Maloney, MA in Fine Art

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#01 NCAD Dublin

SETU Waterford

Margaret Callan Bergin, BA in Fine Art

Elliot Jordan, BA in Art

Alexandra Cobzaru, BA in Fine Art

SETU Wexford

Cora Devlin, BA in Fine Art

Anna Bekmansurova, BA in Art

Sabrina Dunne, BA in Fine Art

Sadhbh McCarthy McCool, BA in Art

Ruth Carr, BA in Fine Art

Alannah Davey, BA in Fine Art

Quentin Dunand, BA in Fine Art Ciara Hennessy, BA in Fine Art Lana Jones, BA in Fine Art

Alicia Fortune, BA in Art Cody McEvoy, BA in Art

Alan David Kelly, BA in Fine Art

TU Dublin (Grangegorman)

Donna Lawlor, BA in Fine Art

Éile Ní Fhiaich, BA in Fine Art

Sophie Morgan, BA in Fine Art

Julia Spyra, BA in Fine Art

Karla Louise Kirwan, BA in Fine Art Scout McLeod, BA in Fine Art

Julia Mysiakowska, BA in Fine Art

Militsa O’Dubhghaill, BA in Fine Art Cillian Quearney, BA in Fine Art Victoria Reilly, BA in Fine Art

Vicky Ochala, BA in Fine Art

Ronan Callahan, BA in Photography Elia de Leon, BA in Photography

Gerry Savage, BA in Photography

Iosef Riddell, BA in Fine Art

Sophie Ryan Ellis, BA in Fine Art Angelika Stocha, BA in Fine Art Olga Urbanczyk, BA in Fine Art

Monika Crowley, MA in Fine Art Guia Rossi, MA in Fine Art

Lana Zubovic, MA in Fine Art

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

2025: Colleges & Longlisted Artists TUS Limerick

Ulster University Belfast

Hazel Gardner, BA in Fine Art Painting

Eva Blakely-Hewitt, BA in Fine Art

Óran Curran Coleman, BA Photography &

Anna Brown, BA in Fine Art

Eva Mulhall, BA in Fine Art Painting Moving Image

Amy Mc Namara, BA Photography & Moving Image

Marlena Walach Szejka, BA Photography & Moving Image

Sam Comerford, BA in Print Contemporary Practice

Toraigh Holland, BA in Print Contemporary Practice

Lucy Sweeney, BA in Print Contemporary Practice Carlee Trabucco, BA in Print Contemporary Practice

Charlie (Lauréline) Yris, BA in Ceramics in Expanding Practice

Esther Barfoot, BA in Fine Art

Dara Borges, BA in Fine Art

Cora Browne, BA in Fine Art

June Connell, BA in Fine Art Elena Davies, BA in Fine Art

Alyssa Donaghy, BA in Fine Art Georgia Esler, BA in Fine Art

Sorcha Keeve, BA in Fine Art Lucy Logan, BA in Fine Art

Maria McGuigan, BA in Fine Art Amy McRoberts, BA in Fine Art Siofra Minnis, BA in Fine Art

Sophia Sikorova, BA in Fine Art Grainne Woods, BA in Fine Art

Susanna Horsch, MA in Fine Art

Aubrey McCrystal, MA in Fine Art Elaine McGinn, MA in Fine Art Rhys Murphy, MA in Fine Art

Joanne Proctor, MA in Fine Art

Bradley Eager, BA in Photography

Oliver Galbraith, BA in Photography Moira Snoddy, BA in Photography Kyslyn Tun, BA in Photography

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#02 Other / Overseas Dianne Curtin, MA in Art and Environment, TU Dublin (Uillinn & Sherkin Island)

Aideen Farrell, MA in Creative Arts, TU Dublin (Grangegorman)

Clara McSweeney, MA in Art & Research Collaboration, IADT

Thaís Muniz, MA in Art & Research Collaboration, IADT

Eden Munroe, MA in Creative Arts, TU Dublin (Grangegorman)

Adela Passas, MA in Fine Art, TUS Limerick School of Art & Design

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

2025: Longlisted Artists Video Colleges in order of appearance: Burren College of Art SETU Waterford SETU Wexford ATU Sligo TUS, Limerick School of Art & Design TU Dublin (Grangegorman) ATU Galway Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology (IADT) Ulster University, Belfast School of Art Griffith College MTU, Crawford College of Art & Design National College of Art & Design (NCAD)

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Click above to watch the video

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

RDS CRAFT AWARDS 2025

Vessels by Alan Meredith, RDS Craft Awards 2018 (Photo by Roland Pashcoff).

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EXHIBITION

EXHIBITION

Kirsty Brodison

Cathy Burke

Paola di Legge

Jennifer Hickey

EMERGING MAKERS 03 – 07 DEC 2025 RDS, Main Hall Hall One Stand 45/46 and 74/75 Hugo Byrne

Mark Newman Vinh Truong

ESTABLISHED MAKERS 02 – 05 DEC 2025 10am – 5pm, RDS Library

Lorna Donlon

Alan Meredith

Andrea Spencer Céline Traynor

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

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This December we celebrate creative achievement across Craft, Music and Visual Arts with the inaugral RDS Arts Awards.

08 December 2025 Lunch 1pm, Ceremony 3pm

RDS CONCERT HALL, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 RSVP essential arts@rds.ie

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The RDS Committee of Arts Katharine Maurer (Chair) Dr Marie Bourke Eleanor Collier

Séamus Crimmins Feargal Hynes Emmet Kane

Ivan McKenna

Michael Mulready Kieran Owens

Caroline Phelan

Caitríona Shaffrey Gaby Smyth

Exhibition Team Niamh O’Malley, Invited Curator

Patrick T. Murphy, Director, RHA Gallery

Brian Duggan, Lead Technician, Maurice Ward Gerry Cahill, Lead Technician, SoundtoLight Ronnie Smith, Managing Director, W Display Karen Phillips, Arts Programme Manager

Eliza McCormack, Arts Programme Executive

Ian Hart, Technical and Facilities Manager, RHA

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Members & Patrons Thank you to the invaluable Members and Patrons of both the RDS and RHA for their ongoing enthusiasm and support, and to all those who have made this exhibition possible.

Sponsors & Partners The family of Mr Robin Lewis-Crosby; the Taylor Art Trust; the RDS

Members’ Arts Fund; Mason Hayes & Curran LLP; Nora Hickey M’Sichili,

Director – Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris; The Royal Hibernian Academy, Graphic Studio Dublin, Dean Group and Slane Castle.

VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

The RDS Visual Art Awards is part of the RDS Arts Programme which supports the transition from student to emerging artist, encouraging the pursuit of a career in visual art, craft and music.

Please contact the artists directly about commissions.

Speak to us today about becoming a member of the RDS and support our philanthropic work by emailing members@rds.ie and see here for further details about the RDS Arts Programme or email arts@rds.ie All information is correct at time of going to print.

Arts Programme Manager Karen Phillips

Arts Programme Executive Eliza McCormack

Technical Team W Display (Build), Sound to Light (AV) and The Maurice Ward Group (Art Installation).

Photography Images of artwork supplied by the artists.

Artist Portraits Leon Farrell

Design Clare Lynch Design (clarelynchdesign.com) Videography Dan Dunne (Red Media House)

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VISUAL ART AWARDS 2025

Supporting creative talent.

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