Meet the Artists 2026
Meet the 12 emerging artists selected for the RDS Visual Art Awards 2026, showcasing a diverse range of contemporary practice from across Ireland. Explore their work and discover the artists exhibiting at Gallery at RDS from 6 November 2026 to 23 January 2027.
Aoife Dunne
Limerick School of Art & Design | Abbeyleix, Co. Laois
Aoife Dunne is a multidisciplinary artist from Abbeyleix, Co. Laois, based between Laois and Limerick. A graduate of Sculpture & Combined Media at Limerick School of Art & Design, her practice spans sculpture, installation, publication, drawing, cartography, walking, photography and sound.
Dunne explores the relationships between the body, the self and the lived environment. Her practice is informed by embodied and practice-based research, including research into crip theory, map-making and access to public space.
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Cognitive Mapping / Connective Tissues
An installation combining a sound walk, gallery-based audio installation, park bench, cobblestone and concrete sculptural intervention, risograph prints and publication. The work considers movement, access and the experience of navigating public space through a disabled body.
Artwork details
Medium: Sound, installation, sculpture, publication
Location: Abbeyleix, Co. Laois
College: Limerick School of Art & Design
Ava Bowden
IADT | Naas, Co. Kildare
Ava Bowden is a textiles artist based in Kildare. Her practice focuses on handmaking rather than machine-based production and draws on personal experiences. Working primarily through hand knitting, she explores chronic illness and slow, intentional creation.
Her imagery ranges from self-portraits to medical objects and text, using the labour and time involved in handmaking as an important part of the work itself.
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dis/comfort
Two hand-knit self-portraits made from 100% wool. Both depict a figure lying in bed, with contrasting warm and cool colour palettes suggesting different states of comfort and illness.
Each work comprises approximately 59,073 stitches, making the physical time and labour invested in their creation central to the work
Artwork details
Medium: Hand-knitted wool tapestry
Dimensions: 96 × 102 cm
Location: Kildare
College: IADT
Beth Gaule
Crawford College of Art & Design, MTU | Waterford / Cork
Originally from Waterford and now based in Cork, Beth Gaule developed their practice around experiences of identity, queerness and self-recognition.
Their installation practice explores the abject and an imagined cyclical process of desire, collection, assembly and rejection. Gaule works through collage, image transfer and sublimation printing, alongside sculptural elements, often deliberately removing heads and faces to focus attention on the concept of the body.
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Installation of five works
The selected installation includes:
- Imitation of the Possible Self
- Refused and Renounced
- Collection from the Established Vessels
- Off cut
- Overflow
The works use sublimation print on fabric, image transfer on PVC and sculptural foam bases.
Artwork details
Medium: Installation, sculpture, collage, image transfer and sublimation print
Location: Waterford / Cork
College: Crawford College of Art & Design, MTU
Caoimhe Kelly
National College of Art & Design | Ballymore Eustace, Co. Kildare
Caoimhe Kelly is an artist and educator from Kildare working primarily with photography and videography. Her practice explores OCD through repetition, surveillance and ritualised behaviour.
Drawing on personal experience, Kelly's work seeks to bring greater awareness to OCD while offering a sense of recognition and comfort to others living with the disorder.
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Her selected body of work uses:
- obsolete CRT televisions
- early digital screens
- looping performance footage
- metronomic sound
- still imagery
Works include Facial Static (Mouth/Eyes), Pixelated Compulsions, Pixelated Compulsions (Reversed) and three video works: Writing and Concealing My Thoughts, Flattening the Compulsive Image and Seeing the Intrusive Voice.
Artwork details
Medium: Photography, video, installation and sound
Location: Ballymore Eustace, Co. Kildare
College: NCAD
Hannah Forde
ATU Sligo | Grange, Co. Sligo
Hannah Forde is a visual artist based along Ireland's Wild Atlantic coast. Her practice centres on Streedagh Beach, where she creates ephemeral, site-specific drawings using collected iron ore.
She translates these observations into studio work, using OSB as a material analogue for sedimentary rock. Iron ore, constructed materials and metal tapes are combined with sandpaper and ferric chloride to evoke natural erosion and geological strata.
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Forde's submitted body of work includes:
- Boards VIII, IX & X (Triptych)
- Boards XI & XII (Diptych)
- Boards XIII & XIV (Diptych)
- Stack I
- Stack II
- Return to Sender
- After loving you
- site-specific iron-ore drawings at Streedagh Beach
The work explores geological formation, erosion and the relationship between the minute and the monumental.
Artwork details
Medium: OSB, aluminium, copper, masking tape, iron ore and ferric chloride
Location: Grange, Co. Sligo
College: ATU Sligo
Harrison Connally
Crawford College of Art & Design | West Cork
Born in Texas and raised in a forest, Harrison Connally later spent two years living off-grid in a yurt. This experience initiated the reconnection with nature that remains central to his practice.
Now living and working in Ireland, Connally builds relationships with Irish nature through botanical materials, sculpture and moving image, with a particular connection to sites in West Cork.
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Reverence
A modular body of 50 pieces combining botanical sculpture and moving image. The work explores evolving human relationships with natural materials and includes seaweed and bladderwrack, specimen jars, film pieces, seaweed arches, seaweed perfumes and motion-activated sculptures.
Key works include Arch of the Sea, Turning Wrack and Monument of Weeds.
Artwork details
Medium: Botanical sculpture and moving image
Location: West Cork
College: Crawford College of Art & Design
Jennifer O’Brien
NCAD | Dublin
Jennifer O’Brien is a Dublin-based artist whose practice interrogates the aftereffects of the Irish state's pursuit of modernity and how these ambitions shape landscape and lived experience.
Working across installation, film, sculpture and text, O’Brien draws on archives, internet forums and local knowledge. Motorways, shopping centres, data centres and IKEA become sites through which she examines contemporary Ireland, alienation, infrastructure, consumption, efficiency and agency.
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Apply Handbrake In The Moments Prior
An installation centred on the West-Link Bridge and IKEA, combining video, sculpture, text and lightbox film.
The body of work includes:
- Texts Planted Along the Wayside
- JIT
- I Call This One, IKEA Sunset
- New Car Smell
- Broken White Line #1 & #2
Artwork details
Medium: Installation, video, sculpture, text and lightbox film
Location: Dublin
College: NCAD
Jools Reilly
TU Dublin | Dublin 8
Jools Reilly is a photography, sound and collage-based artist living in Dublin 8. Their practice centres on area and community, documenting elders and their domestic environments in Rialto.
The work treats homes as material archives of identity and memory, while sound and recorded music become ways of exploring ageing, memory and the passage of time.
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Caryatid; both night and day
A body of work combining photography, found objects, print, collage and sound. The work includes six collaged photographic prints, a 6×4 photograph/gramophone sleeve piece and a reel-to-reel sound installation.
Through the homes and stories of older people in Rialto, the work explores memory, ageing, domestic space and community.
Artwork details
Medium: Photography, found objects, print, collage and sound
Location: Dublin 8
College: TU Dublin
Kodjo (Isac) Kossivi
Limerick School of Art & Design, TUS | Limerick
Kodjo (Isac) Kossivi is a socially engaged, multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, performance and mask making.
His practice explores immigrant identity, cultural heritage and his position as an artist within a community, with collaboration and care central to his approach. He has worked with community artists and institutions in Limerick.
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Threshold of Belonging
A body of work comprising 18 multimedia masks made from repurposed painted fabrics and jewellery, alongside three mixed-media bicycle helmets.
The project also proposes a live performance activating selected masks through music, dance and movement, creating a space for community, expression and cultural exchange.
Artwork details
Medium: Textiles, sculpture, mask making and performance
Location: Limerick
College: Limerick School of Art & Design, TUS
Nikol Ochichenko
IADT Dún Laoghaire | Dunshaughlin, Co. Meath
Nikol Ochichenko is a visual artist from Ukraine whose practice is now based in Ireland. After fleeing the war, she re-established her art practice in Ireland.
Working across photography, moving image and installation, Ochichenko explores community, social engagement and displaced identity, creating spaces in which people affected by war can express grief, guilt and other coping emotions.
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Still Tied
A film, immersive installation and contextual booklet exploring the craft of camouflage net-making through Ukrainian communities in Ireland.
The camouflage nets featured in the installation were made by members of the Ukrainian Community in County Monaghan. The installation connects local acts of solidarity with experiences of war, displacement and community.
Artwork details
Medium: Film, installation and publication
Location: Dunshaughlin, Co. Meath
College: IADT Dún Laoghaire
Roisin O’Connell
TU Dublin / BAVA Visual Arts, Sherkin Island | West Cork
Roisin O’Connell is an artist and mother living and working on a West Cork island. Her multidisciplinary practice spans film, sculpture, installation, sound and performance, engaging with the body, landscape and the more-than-human world.
Influenced by mythology, experimental cinema, radical performance and endurance-based practice, her work explores belonging, consciousness and the shifting boundaries of identity.
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MARTS MOTHERS MADNESS
A film made on Sherkin Island following a search for identity, belonging and instinctive recognition through sustained engagement with cattle.
The film explores the boundary between human and animal through spoken word, performance and physical interaction with the landscape and animals. It is presented inside a cattle trailer situated on the farm where it was made, transforming a structure associated with labour, transport and containment into an immersive viewing space.
Artwork details
Medium: Film, performance and installation
Location: Sherkin Island, Co. Cork
College: TU Dublin / BAVA Visual Arts
Sarah VanDermeer
Burren College of Art | The Burren, Co. Clare
Sarah VanDermeer is an interdisciplinary artist based in Ireland. She holds a BA in sculpture from Pratt Institute and completed an MFA in Art & Ecology at Burren College of Art in 2026.
Her practice combines painting, video installation and sculpture with a strong interest in narrative, immersive environments and environmental research. Her background in theatre and film set design and scenic fabrication informs the ways she constructs and frames landscapes.
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What do we consider a forest?
VanDermeer's submitted body of work examines Irish Sitka spruce plantations and the relationship between landscape, ecology and human intervention.
Works include (this is not a forest), Temu© Ana Mendieta, Phantom Limb, If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, you are the tree, man suit and Stump Stool 1/2.
Artwork details
Medium: Painting, video installation and sculpture
Location: The Burren, Co. Clare
College: Burren College of Art