Fingal County Council announces recipients of 2024/2025 Artist Mentoring Programme.

Fingal County Council Arts Office has announced the recipients of the Artist Mentoring Programme 2024/2025.

The six professional artists selected for this programme were Elaine Grainger, Justine McDonnell, Marie Hanlon, Matthew Coll, Maya Brezing and Sorca O’Farrell.

This professional one-year developmental programme for 2024-2025 is led by Sharon Murphy who has over 30 years’ experience with leading in the visual and performing arts in diverse contexts.

The six artists will avail of one-to-one mentoring with Sharon Murphy on a monthly basis over the year starting October 2024 until October 2025. The experienced mentor creates the environment for the artist to explore, test, probe, and create new pathways in this professional development initiative. This mutually engaged mentoring relationship aims to foster the artistic, personal, and professional growth of the artist at a time of change in their practice.

Sharon Murphy commented on the programme, saying ‘I am thrilled to be working on this highly considered and curated year-long one-to-one mentoring initiative by Fingal County Council Arts Office, a local authority whose support for artists is of the highest quality renowned in the arts and cultural sector in Ireland.  I look forward to working in a creative, curatorial and holistic way with 6 brilliant visual artists at significant junctures on their artistic journeys.’

Fingal County Council Arts Officer Sarah O’Neill said “This developmental programme is an invaluable opportunity for the artists selected to expand their professional careers. They will be supported to build on their creative excellence while fostering professional growth.

About the artists: 

Elaine Grainger: 

Elaine Grainger is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Dublin. She completed a master’s in fine art at NCAD in 2018. Some of her most recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition HOLDING ON Lightly, The LAB Gallery, Dublin (2023), You observe I observed, site–specific collaboration, Juxtapose Art Fair, Denmark (2023), undone, collaborative intervention, Ko?rpasstradir Gallery, Reykjavik (2022)

Grainger’s practice incorporates sculptural interventions, performance, drawing, moving-image and sound. She is interested in the process of transformation where we have both an active or passive role. She wants to capture and present liminal moments through a series of encounters between the physical body and the spaces it inhabits. Her practice is an ongoing attempt to reveal to the viewer the process in which she engages and connects with the world and that these presentations are themselves vulnerable to erasure.

 Justine McDonnell:  

Justine McDonnell is a visual artist and writer working and living in Dublin based in Pallas Project Studios. She received her B.A in fine art at TU Dublin in 2015 and an MA in fine art from University of Ulster in 2017. McDonnells work has been exhibited in a range of galleries including IMMA in 2023, dlr Lexicon in 2022, Holden Gallery, Manchester in 2020 and the Lab Gallery Dublin in 2019. She will have an upcoming performance in 2025 at Draíocht Gallery.

McDonnell’s work is multidisciplinary she performs using her own voice, at times manipulated, her practice investigates the way in which the female voice is represented and treated as an archive. Through the interweaving of autobiographical, fictional, and historical accounts, she addresses female histories from a feminist perspective that manifest through voices into multi-layered works. McDonnell directly engages with representations and subjectification of the female voice whilst activating it as a site and agent for socio-political change, through vocal, textual and photographic compositions.

Marie Hanlon:  

Marie Hanlon is a Fingal based artist and a member of Aosdána. She holds an MA in ‘Art in the Contemporary World’ from The National College of Art & Design, Dublin and a BA in History of Art and English from University College, Dublin. Her artwork in recent years has moved away from painting to focus on sculptural installation. Recent exhibitions include, LAST ACT, Limerick City Gallery, (2024). This was made in collaboration with composer Rhona Clarke and will be shown again at The MAC, Belfast, (2025). Her installation Salt/Water, exhibited at College Lane Galley, Howth, (2023), was part of the Eco showboat Project.

Hanlon’s move from abstract painting to social and politically engaged art developed from a personal response to the environmental crises. Through sculpture, installation, video and sound she tries to engage the visitor with works which are at times humorous and at times profoundly serious. Pieces have direct social and political reference, yet the visual language is restrained and can sometimes be oblique. Collaboration, especially with contemporary composers, has further extended the scope and reach of her work. She is particularly interested in the ‘spatial’ aspect of sound, its capacity to fill the room, surround the audience and directly access the nervous system.

Matthew Coll:  

Matthew Coll is an artist working in painting, sculpture, and installation currently living and working in Dublin. He is a 2022 NCAD graduate with a BA in Fine Art Painting. Some of his most recent Group Exhibitions include ‘Conclude’ at Clancy Quay Studios 2024 and ‘The Ladder is always there’ at Draíocht Gallery 2023/24. His work is part of collections including The Office of Public Works, St. Vincent’s University Hospital and Teelings Whiskey Distillery among others.

Coll’s current work focuses on the subject matter of crowds and attempts to capture the vague anxiety that permeates life amid growing global uncertainty. He is interested in the influence between the collective and the individual, depicting how collective energies of bliss and discontent can manifest into constructive and destructive forces. He often paints on top of discarded and damaged materials to address societal wastefulness through repair and transformation.

Maya Brezing:  

Maya Brezing is an emerging Irish artist working and living in Dublin. She graduated NCAD in 2022 with a Degree in Fine Art specialising in printmaking. She was awarded the Black Church Print Studio Graduate Award 2022 and the Fingal Recent Graduate residency at MART Gallery and Studios 2023. Since Graduating, Brezing has exhibited in numerous shows including The Ladder is Always There with Shell/Ter collective in Draoícht, Unlimiting the Edition in The Library Project and Flesh and Roots, a three-person show in Ardgillan Gallery. Her work is held in the Office of Public works, St. Vincent’s University Hospital and the DCU art collection.

Brezing takes inspiration from derelict, overgrown spaces around Dublin. She looks at how nature constantly renews itself and reclaims spaces and buildings that have been abandoned. Her work imagines a perhaps not-so-distant future, where there are only remnants of mankind and nature has taken over once more. New shoots push through cracks in concrete, vines scale dilapidated walls and trees emerge from the remnants of old houses. These organic structures break down barriers and breathe life into desolate landscapes. Brezing’s work encourages us to reflect on our relationship with the natural world, our responsibility to protect it and the potential to coincide with it for a more harmonious future.

Sorca O’Farrell:  

Sorca O’Farrell is an award- winning landscape artist based in Howth. She studied at IADT and NCAD, graduating with a HDIP and an Honours Degree in Fine Art. Her work has regularly been selected for RHA and RUA Annual Exhibitions, and in 2020 she was awarded the Drawing Prize at the RUA. Her work is included in many public collections; The Office of Public Works, The AIB Collection, Fingal County Council, Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown County Council, and The Department of Transport N.I.

O’Farrell’s work is inspired by place and memory. The paths and forests close to where she grew up and still lives provide the starting point for her process. She makes small observational drawings of groups of trees and paths before returning to her studio to create larger artworks where she slowly builds up layers and textures with charcoal and ink on heavy Italian paper. “O’Farrell’s quest is to harvest a visual landscape of the soul, to register how a sense of place, a sense of memory and a sense of meaning can override this simple translation of the visual facts” (ref. James Hanley RHA)