chrysalis
Adam O' Lomasney
Adam O' Lomasney is a twenty one year old practicing Art student from East Cork. He is currently studying his third year in Crawford College of Art and Design. Adam’s interest in art has always stemmed from the natural world, the world that surrounds him and the conflict between the two.
The most important thing about art to Adam is having it invoke an emotional response or a connection. Giving someone the opportunity to feel through an artwork really feels like a privilege that most people overlook. Adam's work sees the themes of loneliness and isolation within society become interwoven with a variety of mediums, specifically sculpture and video. These themes are depicted in the forms of natural chaos and eldritch like figures. Sprawling roots bursting through concrete, a lumbering rot slowly plaguing a space; these visuals are used to symbolize the feeling of being completely detached from the world that one is surrounded by.
Adam has always wanted to immerse himself in the process of his work. His preferred medium would typically be video as he finds the moving image allows emotion and authenticity to leak through in a more powerful manner and these themes were always key factors to his practice.
Ailbhe Reilly-Tuite
Ailbhe Reilly Tuite is an artist born in Edinburgh who moved to county Meath at age two. They identify as non-binary and began studying in Cork after 2 gap-years during which they travelled and worked in Japan and Ireland. Ailbhe is currently on Erasmus in Budapest, Hungary.
Ailbhe Reilly Tuite’s work explores aspects of human experience through a range of materials including written word, illustration, sculpture, video, sound and installation work. They are attracted to interactions between colours and textures and they often work in imagined worlds, with dreamlike narratives and associations.
For this exhibition Ailbhe is submitting work as part of a virtual collaboration with Aron O’Connell.
Alice Buckley Healy
Alice is in her third year of Fine Art studies at MTU Crawford College of Art and Design. She is originally from West Cork. Since Alice was younger, she has always been creating and experimenting with different art mediums that include paper crafting, jewellery making and textile work to name a few.
Alice Buckley Healy primarily creates dioramas, miniature worlds and small sculptures that playfully engage the viewer. She is inspired by art movements such as Dada and Fluxus. Some of her favourite artists include Sean Miller and Yayoi Kusama. She likes creating art that takes the viewer to another place. Making miniature dioramas allows her to experiment with scale. Since she never knows what will happen from when she starts until the piece is finished, she wants for her work to evoke the sense of adventure.
Aobh O'Brien
Aobh O’Brien is twenty years old and from Noggusduff, County Offaly. She is currently in third year in The Crawford College of Art and Design, Studying fine art with a focus on painting.
Aobh O’Brien is focused on painting, in particular abstract painting. She has been experimenting with different methods of applying the paint such as dripping, swiping, mixing the paint on the surface, and mixing in household materials into the acrylic paint like washing up liquid, oil, water, and tissue paper to see what effect can be achieved. This ties in with her methods of applying the paint, using objects like mops and squidges. These processes emerge from daily life, she’s found this technique very intuitive.
Áron O'Connell
Aron is an Irish-Hungarian artist based in cork, he currently is in 3rd year of fine art in Crawford college.
With the use of video, immersive installations or photography, Áron creates affective experiences. As Hitchcock writes, 'the main objective is to arouse the audiences emotion and the emotion arises from the way in which the sequences are juxtaposed". His work focuses on inducing feelings and sensations using film and photography shot from Áron's own reality.
Camilla Corti
Camilla Corti was born in 2000 in Vipiteno, Italy, on the Austrian border. She attended the art school G. Pascoli and moved to Ireland in 2019. Now a student in Crawford College of Art and Design, she is focusing on performance and installation art, exploring and representing her bilingual heritage.
‘Memento vivere. Memento mori’ is the collaboration between artists Camila Corti and Zoe Velthuysen. Throughout their artistic journey, both have been moving parallel to each other in both material practice and themes while still maintaining different approaches. In Corti’s art practice, she uses experimental processes with materials such as acrylic paint, plaster, textiles and charcoal, in a ritualistic, performative manner to express internal emotions and memories. Velthuysen uses a variety of man-made material such as foam, plastic, string and metal to replicate movement frozen in place.
For this piece, both artists merge their artistic processes in a sculpture performance piece. The concept embraces the journey from life to death. The sculpture’s structure represents creation and birth using reflective surfaces, light and string. Corti then does a three-part performance representing the linear stages of life after birth, flourishing, maturing and death, by forming mass as the bass of the sculpture using a variety of material.
Caoimhe Moore
Caoimhe Moore is a twenty one year old Cork based mixed media artist, primarily focusing on printing and sculptural practices. She is currently a 3rd year BA Fine Art student studying at the Crawford College of Art and Design in Munster Technological University, Cork.
Caoimhe Moore’s work explores the concept of environmentalism, with a focus on using eco-friendly and recycled materials. Her practice focuses primarily on visually capturing the relationship between people and the environment, as well as the contrast of nature’s fragility and resilience when given the chance to grow. Exploring with different mediums and upcycling/recycled materials allows her to express her ideas in a way that is reusable, sustainable and playful.
Catherine O'Neill
Catherine O’Neill is from Cork City. She is currently a third-year student at MTU Crawford College of Art and Design, Sharman Crawford Street, Cork where she is studying a BA (HONOURS) in Fine Art which is a four-year degree.
She has a Fetac Level 4 in Drawing and Painting, Fetac Level 5 in Art Craft and Design and a Fetac Level 6 in Painting and Sculpture at St John’s College, Sawmill Street, Cork.
Creative outcomes are the results of extensive engagement and experimentation with various mediums both traditional such as charcoal, graphite, paint and clay and non-traditional materials such as gels, glue, crackle glaze, tinfoil, and plastic. In addition to these mediums, the careful selection of colour and the appeal of organic subjects found in nature: for example leaves, trees, flowers, shells, and seaweed, leads to a link between abstract art, land, and seascapes.
The further investigation of these creative processes lies now in the pursuit of a visual silence between atmosphere and representation.
Clare Brennan
Cork based artist Clare Brennan, was born in Kilkenny and is currently studying Fine Art at the Crawford College of Fine Art and Design, MTU. In 2021 Brennan received her NFC Level 5 from the Ormonde College of Further Education Kilkenny.
Clare Brennan is a contemporary artist who creates cut-out silhouettes, exploring questions of absence and presence of figures from childhood photographs.
Clare uses a combination of acrylics, markers and pencils to create her portraits and utilises everyday objects, such as cardboard and mountboard as her canvas. She incorporates items from her domestic life to bring a more personal aspect to the artworks.
Cutting out the silhouettes is a key factor in her process as it allows her to create an immersive landscape that her viewers can walk into.
She experiments with the siting of her cut-outs, bringing them into the real world, a dangerous place for a child to be on their own.
Ebon Creedon
Ebon Creedon is an artist from Macroom, County Cork.
Working as a mural artist, he also is attending Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork and is in his third year.
Ebon Creedon’s oil paintings depict landscapes that create their own sense of time and space.
These landscapes in turn create their own world which is separate from our own. The work features various religious and biblical themes, which are used in order to question and learn about his own relationship with religion and spirituality. In Ireland there is a shared connection that we have due to religion, whether we are practising or not. This prevalence and importance of religion in Ireland feeds into his work as it is ingrained into the Irish psyche from the beginning.
He is interested in the relationship that may exist between spirituality and the land, and how our shared history of religion in Ireland impacts the land beneath us today.
Using biblical references, light phenomena, iconography and symbolism he is aiming to create a more contemporary take on landscape painting.
Erina Mooney
Erina Mooney is an artist from Co.Waterford and currently in their 3rd year of fine art in Crawford College of Art and Design. Erina Mooney is also a chef. With a culinary background their art is surrounded by food.
Erina Mooney’s concept is influenced by her professional relationship to food production. Their artwork is created through print and installation. They employ a humourous graphic style with a kitsch queer colour palette. Erina is Influenced by irish culture, the politics of food. They are concerned with questions such as, how we eat, where food comes from and our relationships with food and its production. Making food as the medium and the theme, Erina wants to create a conversation with the viewer around these questions.
Felicia Garrivan
Felicia Garrivan is originally from Galway before moving to Cork City. She has previously achieved a level 6 degree in Photography Studies in St. Johns Central College, Sawmill St. Felicia is now currently in her 3rd year of BA Fine Art studies in CCAD. Felicia’s main medium is visual-based art, experimenting in the different mediums in Photography.
Felicia Garrivan’s main medium is analogue and digital photography. Her current work is focusing on portraits of herself, close friends and she is exploring the female gaze through the act of photography. One of her main inspirations is the photographer Nan Goldin, as a large part of Goldin’s work is focusing on herself and her friends. Like Garrivan, Goldin also explores ideas of desire and sexuality in her work.
Hannah Roberts
Hannah Roberts is an Irish artist from Cobh who is currently in her third year studying Fine Art, at CCAD, MTU. She is experienced in many art forms such as textiles, painting, and sculpture.
Hannah Roberts explores the world through an animal’s point of view while taking on the animal’s character in an attempt to build human animal connection. She creates realistic wearable animal heads and body parts which are used in performance. These costumes allow the artist to feel empathetic towards the animal she is portraying. Artists who inspire her are Kate Clark, David Altmejd, and Daisy Collingridge.
Isaac Juhl
Raised in Washington, United States of America from the age of two by an Irish mother and a Danish father, Isaac Juhl gained a unique insight into life as a first-generation immigrant. After moving back to Ireland at the age of fifteen, he once again experienced life as a foreigner, with little knowledge of his cultural surroundings. Over time, inspired by his various backgrounds, Juhl experimented with ideas of a disconnect from one’s culture and its effect on the perception of self.
Isaac Juhl is an aspiring contemporary artist focused predominantly on the interdependent relationship between cultural identity and art. Whether it’s the effect of an artist’s identity on their own work, or the creation of sub-cultures within the art world, art and identity are undeniably linked.
With this in mind, Juhl analyses the aspects and aesthetics of his varying cultural backgrounds, certainly influenced by his experience as an immigrant, both in the United States of America, and in Ireland. He is also particularly inspired by artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and his use of art to connect to his heritage.
Principally working with drawing materials such as graphite, ink, and charcoal, Juhl enjoys working using an improvised and experimental creative process, most recently using collage and image-transferring techniques on plaster.
Isobel Mc Carthy
Isobel Mc Carthy is an artist based in Cork. She is a third year student studying in Crawford
College of Art and Design. In 2019 Isobel received her NFC level 5 in Art Portfolio from
Coláiste Stiofán Naofa. Isobel works with a variety of different media.
Isobel Mc Carthy uses a range of printmaking and mixed media techniques in her artwork. The work explores her memories as a child, highlighting things from her household that are familiar to her but are also nostalgic, conjuring memory and recognition. Isobel is empowering her dreams and her subconscious thoughts. Her motifs and symbols may be seemingly insignificant to one, but extremely significant to another. She uses recurring imagery and characters in her work which, while personal to her, are ambiguous and open to interpretation.
James Clancy
James Clancy is from Conna, Cork. He is currently in 3rd year studying fine art at MTU Crawford College. His interests and hobbies include outside activities such as hiking in the woods and kayaking in his local river.
James Clancy’s work explores natural materials and found objects such as soil, plant matter, charcoal and rust through a range of artistic processes such as sculpture, paper making and expressive mark making. The media that he uses and explores carry themes of environmentalism and reflects his own interactions with the natural world. He creates installations which produce a visual story that a viewer can walk around and explore themselves.
Jen Ward
Jennifer Ward grew up in East Cork in a farming community. She attended secondary school in Cork City, thereafter she completed a two year FETAC Art Course at CSN. She is currently in 3rd year of the Fine Art degree at the Crawford College Art and Design.
Jen Ward is exploring the unconscious dreamy mind of storytelling based on the artist’s own personal experience. Of buzzing, gentle, joyful atmospheres of opera, concerts and festivals. The materials used are paints, crayons, masking tape and paper. The crayons add a soft, light texture to the painting, masking tape offers the sharpness of the line border, the paints combine, and the paper holds the concept together. The vibrant colours guide the path to the story being told in the painting. Hayao Miyazaki's animation film “Spirited Away” had an impact on the artist’s approach. Henri De Toulouse - Lautrec painting “ Reine de Joie”, inspire the colours used are bold and simple.
Joe Bentley
Joe Bentley is a 3rd year fine art student in Crawford College of Art & Design in Cork City. He was born in 1973 into a family of artists. In Berlin in 2016 he became a professional print artist. Bentleys work was displayed in the 2016 gallery weekend inn Berlin. He is represented by Supalifekiosk print gallery located in Berlin.
Joe Bentley is interested in the Utopian idea of levelling values.
Following Sol le Witt's Minimalist Grid to plot and record possible ways to display objects, Bentley alters a collection of found objects through the application of white paint. This strips back the individual characteristics of each object, disrupts hierarchical meanings and unifies the collection in order for the work to be viewed in a different way.
Jonathan Stack
Jonathan Stack is an artist from Kerry. In 2020 he completed a portfolio course in art, craft and design from Colaiste Siofán Naofa. He has also completed a course in creative writing from the Cork college of FET. He co-wrote, directed, shot and acted in a short film which went on to be screened internationally. He was awarded and attended an RTE Film workshop with the Irish film director and screenwriter Vincent Lambe. He is currently in the third year of his BA in Fine Art from the Crawford College of Art and Design.
Stacks practice spans drawing, collage,painting, photography and video work. His work explores themes of identity, the everyday, queer kinship and the Irish landscape. Stack’s work is influenced by the artists Trish Morrisey , Prudence Flint and Eimear Walshe, as well as texts by Maggie Nelson , David J Getsy and Ocean Vyoung. Stack has said that he is “interested in exploring and reflecting the variety of experiences that happen to me as a person coming of age at this exact time in history.”
Karina Bergin Maher
Currently based in Cork, Karina Bergin Maher is a 21-year-old artist who works mainly in photography and installation. She's currently getting her bachelor's degree in Fine Art at the Crawford College of Art and Design.
Born in Russia in 2001 she moved to Tipperary, Ireland in 2004 where she lived and studied up until 2020 when she moved to Cork to carry out the rest of her studies.
Karina Bergin Maher uses photography to stop time even just for a second and to seek beauty in the mundane. Even if the mundane is bleak and violent there is something often very beautiful about the rawness of it all capturing something disturbing yet enticing.
Her work explores isolation and grief using installation and photography.
Kathy Cronin
Kathy Cronin is a Cork based painter originally from rural Kerry. She is currently working towards a degree in Fine Art at the Crawford College of Art and Design.
Kathy Cronin primarily uses the medium of acrylic paint to depict the domestic space and often forgotten or unsung labours of love conducted by matriarchs in the home. Her paintings are rooted in biblical scriptures which she reinterprets into contemporary contexts that aim to recognise women with no pressure to conform to an aesthetic gaze, allowing them to command presence as they are without debate.
Katie Mann
Katie Mann is an Irish painter in her third year of study at Crawford. Prior to her education here, she studied a level five in Art and Design as well as a course in Art Therapy. Her work was also exhibited in Lismore Castle Arts and GOMA during this time.
Mann approaches her painting practice beginning with a deep meditative process, collecting drawings and words from her surroundings and experience. She is interested in the idea of cosmic energy as an underlying force that connects all living matter and works with abstract language as a tool that transcends form. Mann’s work is auto-graphical, drawing on her understanding of the world to display connection through universal experience. She is deeply intrigued by the idea of ‘thick emotion’ as a way of transcribing an overwhelming force that holds no definitive shape, yet relates to a known experience of pure unfiltered energy within us. As each painting contains a different approach, they represent single moments of information and energy.
Lara Quinn
Lara is a Cork-based artist currently in her 3rd year of study at Crawford College of Art and Design. Before deciding to pursue a degree in Fine Art, Lara studied History of Art at UCC and attended a level 6 art course at Colaiste Stiofain Naofa.
Lara Quinn’s current visual practice revolves around the concept of self-mythology. Through her work she hopes to reinvigorate classical mythology and iconography within her own narrative in an attempt to explore her relationship with her identity and past, both regarding her cultural heritage and her familial ancestry. This work is primarily rooted in the history of old Ireland, where the lines between lore, legend and land can be blurred. Her research draws from primitive, religious motifs, primarily concerned with sacred acts of ritual and worship. Her primary medium is oil paint; however, she hopes to engage the viewer in a more tangible experience of her work through the creation of her relics, a composition of handmade objects and garments linking to imagery and themes present within her paintings.
Leslie Allen Spillane
Leslie Allen Spillane is a 3rd year student in MTU CCAD. She works in lens-based media using alternative photographic techniques. She also has a degree in English Literature and Art History and an MA in Modern and Contemporary Art History from UCC.
In an era of increasing challenges to the climate and human life it is more vital than ever to find ways of making art sustainably. Leslie Allen Spillane’s art practice takes up this challenge in photography by attempting to find more eco-friendly alternatives to traditional processes using home-made developers, and alternative printing techniques.
Not only do we recognise that plants energise the earth, connecting terrestrial creatures to solar energy, but they also demonstrate sensitivity and communication beyond individuality. This creates an urgent need to reinvent human-plant relations, not only on the discursive level but also via the materialities of bodies allowing interconnectivity far beyond what has ever been imagined.
Using only plants grown in her own garden, Allen-Spillane is attempting to generate images that are not just visual representations of their subject matter but emerge from the plant material itself, to imagine new potential futures.
Lisa O'Sullivan
Lisa O’Sullivan is from Cork and is a third year student of Fine Art at CCAD, MTU.
She is a graduate of UCC and has a background in Arts Management. She is also a traditional fiddle player and a music teacher.
Lisa O’Sullivan uses elements of print, drawing, photography, sculpture & performance in her work. She draws inspiration from folklore, mythology and ritual and is interested in
exploring the interstitial space between landscape, ceremony, movement and calendar cycles.
During times of global uncertainty, she is investigating how resistance to failing systems can be accessed through connections to the natural world. She imagines new narratives through the reinterpretation of stories and figures from Irish mythology.
Mark O'Donovan
Mark O Donovan was born in 2000. He is from Slieverue, Co. Kilkenny. He feels a strong connection to his hometown as it is an area with a very strong sense of community. He is a third year art student currently studying in MTU, Crawford College of Art and Design.
Mark O Donovan’s studio work mainly consists of painting, collage and assemblage. Currently he is working on large scale and abstract compositions using drip painting techniques. In his work, he incorporates found objects from his local area and his everyday life.
Michaela McCann
Michaela McCann is a twenty one year old Irish artist based in Cork, currently in her third year of a Bachelor's degree in Fine Art at MTU, Crawford College of Art and Design. She is a painter and photographer who focuses on portraying a sense of unreality in her work.
Michaela McCann's work explores themes of otherworldliness primarily through the mediums of painting and photography. The work she creates is inspired by a space between reality and dream, taking surreal imagery and anchoring it in reality with figurative painting techniques. She uses analogue photography in her practice focussing on its material quality. McCann's work is composed of illusive, unusual compositions often distorted due to the fleeting and fragmented nature of dream memory.
Murrough O Donovan
Murrough O’Donovan is a twenty three year old artist from Skibbereen, West Cork. He has completed a level 5 course in Art and Design at Cork College of Commerce and is now studying a BA Hons Fine Art at MTU, Crawford College of Art and Design.
Currently Murrough O’Donovan is working with pen and ink drawing and found object sculpture, with some photographic elements. He uses images and symbols from old stories, mythologies. His work is inspired by imagery from his local forests, urban environments and technologies. O'Donovan is interested in depicting how we as a species and culture have separated ourselves from nature.
Siobhan O'Sulllivan
Siobhan O’Sullivan lives in Cork and is a 3rd year Fine Art student in CCAD/MTU. She completed Art, Craft and Design (QQI L5) and Art 2 (QQI L6) in Colaiste Stiofain Naofa, Cork.
The move towards entropy is intrinsic to the world. Everything ends, nothing lasts forever. Siobhan O’Sullivan investigates this dissolution and fragmentation through drawing and sculpture using the language of line and space. This tendency is a fundamental paradox of living; we exist as ordered entities in a universe that moves towards disorder and chaos.
Úna Ní Chaoimh
Úna Ní Chaoimh is studying Fine Art at the Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork.
Using drawing, moving image, installation and performance Úna Ní Chaoimh explores how she, a human person, relates to the complex matrix of other presences in the world – soil, wind, water, creatures – and how these presences relate to one another.
Zara Foley
Zara Foley is a twenty -year-old student who is currently in her third year studying Fine art at MTU, Crawford College of Art and Design. Zara was born in Cork but lived her first few years In Brussels, Belgium. In addition to studying Fine Art she spends the majority of her time training with Cork City’s women’s soccer team who she will Captain this season.
Zara Foley is an artist who draws inspiration from a range of styles, including abstract, pop art, cartoon, graffiti and realism. Her work is centred around characters she has created in her head, which are depicted in bold, graphic shapes and vibrant colours, each character is a unique expression of her imagination and worldview. Through a blend of abstraction and realism, she aims to convey the depth and complexity of human experience. She grew her passion for art from her Grandmother Katherine O’ Riordan who sadly passed away in 2014, but Zara still carries on her legacy by using her grandmother’s art supplies in all her works. Her art explores themes of identity, connection, and the human condition. Ultimately, Zara’s goal is to create work that invites viewers into a world of imagination and possibility and leave a lasting impact on those who encounter her work.
Zoe Harley
Zoe Harley (b. 1992) is a fine art painter and mixed media visual artist based in Cork City, Ireland. She has been developing her skills as a painter since pursuing an education in Art & Design in Colaiste Stefan Naofa in 2018, where she graduated with distinction.
Zoe Harley’s work explores her relationship to herself and her lived experiences, using various forms of self-portraiture such as painting and photography to investigate autobiography. Her practice revolves around themes of confessional art, with influence from artists such as Tracey Emin and Nan Goldin – as well as various online subcultures.
Using the artist as the subject, she is trying to create intense and intimate engagements with the viewer and offering up a vulnerable documentation of her life. Often her portraits are made during – or influenced by – deeply personal, emotional and sometimes traumatic happenings in her life.
Her hope ultimately is that these raw portraits evoke something of the honest human experience, through the narrative of the contemporary millennial female lens.
Zoe Velthuysen
Zoe Velthuysen born in 1998 in Sydney, Australia. She emigrated to Tipperary in 2009. She is in her third year of Fine Art BA Honors at Crawford College of Art and Design. Her work is in sculpture, installations and drawing and looks at themes of migration and movement
‘Memento vivere. Memento mori’ is the collaboration between artists Camila Corti and Zoe Velthuysen. Throughout their artistic journey, both have been moving parallel to each other in both material practice and themes while still maintaining different approaches. In Corti’s art practice, she uses experimental processes with materials such as acrylic paint, plaster, textiles and charcoal, in a ritualistic, performative manner to express internal emotions and memories. Velthuysen uses a variety of man-made material such as foam, plastic, string and metal to replicate movement frozen in place.
For this piece, both artists merge their artistic processes in a sculpture performance piece. The concept embraces the journey from life to death. The sculpture’s structure represents creation and birth using reflective surfaces, light and string. Corti then does a three-part performance representing the linear stages of life after birth, flourishing, maturing and death, by forming mass as the bass of the sculpture using a variety of material.