Artists Speak

Majella Clancy is a painter based in Belfast. In 2012 she completed a practice-based PhD at Ulster University, where now she lectures in Fine Art Painting. Her work was recently presented in the Royal Academy Summer Show, London (2026), Outset Gallery, Galway (2026), John Moores Painting Prize Exhibition, Liverpool (2025-26), and ‘Matter Out of Place’, a solo exhibition at Ulster University Gallery, Belfast (2025). Her chapter ‘The Oblique Gesture: Painting Gender and Materiality after de Kooning’ will be published in The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Painting (2026).

Volodymyr Topiy is a Ukrainian multidisciplinary visual and performance artist based in Ireland. Working across painting, graphics, performance, and contemporary iconography, his practice explores memory, spirituality, identity, displacement, and the relationship between personal experience and collective history. His work has been exhibited internationally across Europe, Japan, and Israel. A recipient of the 2025 Arts Council of Ireland Agility Award, Topiy creates interdisciplinary projects that bridge traditional icon painting with contemporary art and live performance.

Sian Costello is a multidisciplinary artist based in Limerick City. In her painting, drawing, and performance, she uses her own body to intertwine the roles of artist and model, using this corporeal research to reflect on her own lived female experience as well as interrogating the legacy of the figurative painting tradition. Sian graduated with a BA in Fine Art Painting from LSAD in 2020, and has since exhibited nationally and internationally, with recent solo shows including ‘Hymn to Him’ last year at The Dock in Carrick-on-Shannon.

Mark Garry is an Irish educator, artist, curator, writer, and occasional musician. His multifaceted practice is driven by a fundamental interest in observing how we navigate the world and the subjectivity inherent in these navigations. While located in research, his work prioritises the poetic over the didactic, where research elements are subtly embedded, and the works combine to enable an encounter that merges modesty and complexity. Mark has held exhibitions at museums and art venues in Europe, North America, Australia and Asia and he was one of the artists who represented Ireland at the 2005 Venice Biennale.

Manar Mervat Al Shouha is a Syrian painter based in Dublin. Raised in Damascus, Syria, she graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Damascus University in 2016 and later taught at the Arab International University. Her figurative practice examines self-recognition, human relationships, and the tension between inner experience and outward identity. She received the RHA Homan Potterton Award (2026) and was shortlisted for the Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery, London (2025). Her work was recently shown in London’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and the Hennessy Craig Exhibition. Manar is currently artist-in-residence at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios.

Conor McFeely’s work has been exhibited widely in Ireland and abroad. Working across installation, sculpture, sound, photography, video, and found materials, his work investigates fractured narratives, countercultural histories, and structures of ideological, architectural, and psychological control. Material curiosity and media experimentation sit alongside focused research interests. While these points of departure are important, they do not predetermine outcomes; improvisation is integral to his process, and the visceral frequently competes with the conceptual.