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FIONN TIMMINS THE RDS VISUAL ART AWARDS 22 Novemb
er 2024 – 18 January 2025 The RDS Visual Art Awards partner with the RHA Gallery Dublin for the second time in its history, supporting the newest talents in Irish art today as they enter into professional practice, while guiding these graduate artists to make a largescale exhibition at the RHA Gallery from November 2024 until January 2025. The RDS Visual Art Awards is the most important platform for visual art graduates in Ireland. It has a very profound social impact on artists and the country’s cultural industry as it provides substantial funding to arts programming. The Awards also create a high-end curated exhibition opportunity with a significant prize fund this year of over €40,000, as well as vital exposure for emerging visual artists as they move into early professional practice. This year’s curator is the RHA’s very own Colin Martin. Colin is an acclaimed Irish artist in his own right and is also the Head of the RHA School – a dynamic learning environment to support art students to build the skillset and material knowledge to make creative and exciting art for today. Martin says that “The RDS Visual Arts Awards is an exciting and dynamic exhibition that brings together the innovative and relevant art practices of an emerging generation of visual artists, where platform, practice and audience meet. The alchemy of these interwoven strands has a storied history and has forged the careers of many of the todays leading voices in contemporary visual arts from established artists Dorothy Cross and James Hanley to new voices in contemporary art such as Elaine Hoey and Bassam Al Sabah. This is a rigorous all-Island selection process and I am delighted to act as curator for this year’s iteration to be held at the prestigious RHA.” There are 10 exhibiting artists that have AVA LOWRY been meticulously selected to exhibit this year and they have been chosen from some of the best BA & MA visual art graduates from all over Ireland, having gone through a rigorous competitive two-stage process to get their work into this much sought show for emerging artists. The 2024 exhibition will be embedded into the RHA Gallery’s core programming as it runs from 22 November 2024 – 18 January 2025: giving further opportunity to the artists’ work to be seen at an internationally renowned gallery space and for a proper run period of time that gives impetus to spotlight their work holistically. 32 FIONN TIMMINS Ciorcal na nDéise MTU Crawford College of Art and Design @fionn_mac_tiomain KEARA SIMONSEN Still from Kapuluan Belfast School of Art, Ulster University @keara.s_media CLAIRE RITCHIE The Mutterer Belfast School of Art, Ulster University claireritchieart AVA LOWRY Wrapping II Limerick School of Art and Design, Technological University of the Shannon, TUS. @avalowry_art STELL DE BURCA Make your Transition Limerick School of Art and Design, Technological University of the Shannon, TUS. @stella_draws