• Róisín Kennedy
  

• 
  Spring 2026
  Volume 43. No. 1

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Work shortlisted for the 2025 RDS Visual Art Awards was on exhibition at the RHA Gallery from 25 November to 25 January in a show curated by artist Niamh O’Malley. The process of selecting the work entailed a team of independent curators visiting all the BA and MA degree shows in Irish art colleges to compile a longlist of 110, which was shortened by the judging panel to the 10 seen in the current exhibition. The result is a diverse show, spread across the ground floor of the RHA, a challenging space in which to hang a cohesive exhibition, given that it extends across open areas and two separate rooms. In addition to her challenging curatorial role of putting in sync works that were never intended to be seen together, O’Malley acted as mentor to the shortlisted students, advising them on how to display the work and guiding them into their new role of exhibiting artist. The show ranges from film, seen in Thaís Muniz’s (IADT Dún Laoghaire) beautifully made The Kite Ballet (Fig 1), where kite-flying becomes a participatory practice, creating connections, to installation such as Éile Medb Ní Fhiaich’s (TU Dublin) imposing and buoyant The Eve of Quiet Creatures, consisting of interconnected industrial metal, foam and ceramic elements, to the visceral painting seen in three large works exploring the monstrous feminine by Billie Adele O’Regan (MTU Crawford College of Art and Design) (Fig 3). Sculpture is presented in Susanne Horsch’s (Belfast School of Art, Ulster University) playful, soft, three-dimensional sculpture Swimming in Space. Here, enlarged breasts, genitalia and sperm sewn and quilted together seem to explode across the atrium of the gallery.

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