Tadhg Ó Cuirrín is a multidisciplinary artist based in Galway, with a focus on painting & digital media in recent years.
In 2024 he presented new work at the RHA as part of the Hennessey Craig Award exhibition. He undertook a residency at the Fish Factory Creative Center in Stöðvarfjörður, Iceland, & took part in the Turps Correspondence Course. He held a solo exhibition at the Cash Shop, a new Co Galway gallery & curatorial project of artist Jim Ricks. In 2025 he’ll undertake residencies at the Guesthouse in Cork city, & Áras Éanna in Co Galway.
Before that, since returning to Ireland in 2019, he has held solo exhibitions at Pallas Projects/Studios & Custom House Studios in Co Mayo, & presented new work at the TULCA Festival of Visual Art in Galway in 2022. His work is supported by the Arts Council, Ealaín na Gaeltachta & Galway County Council.
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My work is interested in how the small events of our lives echo with the wider world of current and historical events. I am interested in how they can change us, but also how we can change them. I look at how the effects of power and powerlessness run through society and resonate in the physical sensations of individuals and objects. I think about social anxieties, but also social pleasures, and how both are abstracted online for profit.
Often the work is situated in a domestic setting. Bedsheets, curtains, envelopes, raincoats, bin bags, moonlight in the garden. Over time these everyday elements, by some sleight of hand, are conceptually turned inside out. I am looking for something, and it is hoped that by parsing my everyday existence as art, that some deeper understanding of the world will arise; art as the accomplishment of knowledge in action. The unformed intuition in your head has gained concrete form. The work often nods towards the supernatural and the horrific, but it more interested in the idea of horror and the supernatural as a kind of shorthand. There is also a, possibly romantic, desire to draw connections between disparate topics, to find clues in the everyday objects presented in front of us that speak of some bigger picture, some inexplicable incomprehensible order. Almost an act of act faith. Or a conspiracy theory.
Screen based work and CGI play an important role in my practice. There’s a symbiosis in how they inform my object-based work and vice versa, and more generally there is a heterogeneity to the forms and themes of the work. This plays out within a group of works, but also within individual pieces. Maybe the whole is not more than the sum of its parts, but more like a shopping list. Collage is simply a feature of the life we lead. A big part of our culture is about putting things together, with little distinction between invented and found, and even less between past and present. The fragmentary, the deconstructed, even the deliberately mismatched – that is our reality.
There is an ambiguous approach to form, image, and material that ties in with themes of ambiguous cultural, architectural, and personal memory running through the work. This idea of ambiguity is important in the work. Irony is saying one thing but meaning its opposite, while ambiguity is the ability for a form to hold two or more meanings. Ambiguity is generous. It rewards prolonged looking. The right gesture can evoke the unstable experience of a protagonist who chooses a course of action, but who retains an awareness of the thing not chosen. This and not that – but with a bit of that still present.
Maybe the principal theme of the work is, or will be, my own aesthetic malleability.
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Ealaíontóir ildisciplíneach é Tadhg Ó Cuirrín atá lonnaithe i nGaillimh, le fócas ar phéinteáil & na meáin dhigiteacha le déanaí.
In 2024 chuir sé saothar nua i láthair ag an RHA mar chuid de thaispeántas Hennessey Craig Award. Thug sé faoi chónaitheacht ag an Fish Factory Creative Centre i Stöðvarfjörður, an Íoslainn, agus ghlac sé páirt i gCúrsa Comhfhreagrais Turps. Reáchtáil sé taispeántas aonair ag an Cash Shop, gailearaí nua i gCo na Gaillimhe agus tionscadal coimeádaíochta de chuid an ealaíontóra Jim Ricks. In 2025 tabharfaidh sé faoi chónaitheachtaí sa Teach Aíochta i gCathair Chorcaí, agus in Áras Éanna i gCo. na Gaillimhe.
Roimhe sin, ó d’fhill sé ar Éirinn in 2019, bhí taispeántais aonair aige ag Pallas Projects/Studios & Custom House Studios i gCo. Mhaigh Eo, agus chuir sé saothar nua i láthair ag Féile Amharcealaíne TULCA i nGaillimh in 2022. Tacaíonn an Chomhairle Ealaíon, Ealaín na Gaeltachta agus Comhairle Chontae na Gaillimhe lena shaothar.
In 2024 he presented new work at the RHA as part of the Hennessey Craig Award exhibition. He undertook a residency at the Fish Factory Creative Center in Stöðvarfjörður, Iceland, & took part in the Turps Correspondence Course. He held a solo exhibition at the Cash Shop, a new Co Galway gallery & curatorial project of artist Jim Ricks. In 2025 he’ll undertake residencies at the Guesthouse in Cork city, & Áras Éanna in Co Galway.
Before that, since returning to Ireland in 2019, he has held solo exhibitions at Pallas Projects/Studios & Custom House Studios in Co Mayo, & presented new work at the TULCA Festival of Visual Art in Galway in 2022. His work is supported by the Arts Council, Ealaín na Gaeltachta & Galway County Council.
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.
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.
.
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My work is interested in how the small events of our lives echo with the wider world of current and historical events. I am interested in how they can change us, but also how we can change them. I look at how the effects of power and powerlessness run through society and resonate in the physical sensations of individuals and objects. I think about social anxieties, but also social pleasures, and how both are abstracted online for profit.
Often the work is situated in a domestic setting. Bedsheets, curtains, envelopes, raincoats, bin bags, moonlight in the garden. Over time these everyday elements, by some sleight of hand, are conceptually turned inside out. I am looking for something, and it is hoped that by parsing my everyday existence as art, that some deeper understanding of the world will arise; art as the accomplishment of knowledge in action. The unformed intuition in your head has gained concrete form. The work often nods towards the supernatural and the horrific, but it more interested in the idea of horror and the supernatural as a kind of shorthand. There is also a, possibly romantic, desire to draw connections between disparate topics, to find clues in the everyday objects presented in front of us that speak of some bigger picture, some inexplicable incomprehensible order. Almost an act of act faith. Or a conspiracy theory.
Screen based work and CGI play an important role in my practice. There’s a symbiosis in how they inform my object-based work and vice versa, and more generally there is a heterogeneity to the forms and themes of the work. This plays out within a group of works, but also within individual pieces. Maybe the whole is not more than the sum of its parts, but more like a shopping list. Collage is simply a feature of the life we lead. A big part of our culture is about putting things together, with little distinction between invented and found, and even less between past and present. The fragmentary, the deconstructed, even the deliberately mismatched – that is our reality.
There is an ambiguous approach to form, image, and material that ties in with themes of ambiguous cultural, architectural, and personal memory running through the work. This idea of ambiguity is important in the work. Irony is saying one thing but meaning its opposite, while ambiguity is the ability for a form to hold two or more meanings. Ambiguity is generous. It rewards prolonged looking. The right gesture can evoke the unstable experience of a protagonist who chooses a course of action, but who retains an awareness of the thing not chosen. This and not that – but with a bit of that still present.
Maybe the principal theme of the work is, or will be, my own aesthetic malleability.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Ealaíontóir ildisciplíneach é Tadhg Ó Cuirrín atá lonnaithe i nGaillimh, le fócas ar phéinteáil & na meáin dhigiteacha le déanaí.
In 2024 chuir sé saothar nua i láthair ag an RHA mar chuid de thaispeántas Hennessey Craig Award. Thug sé faoi chónaitheacht ag an Fish Factory Creative Centre i Stöðvarfjörður, an Íoslainn, agus ghlac sé páirt i gCúrsa Comhfhreagrais Turps. Reáchtáil sé taispeántas aonair ag an Cash Shop, gailearaí nua i gCo na Gaillimhe agus tionscadal coimeádaíochta de chuid an ealaíontóra Jim Ricks. In 2025 tabharfaidh sé faoi chónaitheachtaí sa Teach Aíochta i gCathair Chorcaí, agus in Áras Éanna i gCo. na Gaillimhe.
Roimhe sin, ó d’fhill sé ar Éirinn in 2019, bhí taispeántais aonair aige ag Pallas Projects/Studios & Custom House Studios i gCo. Mhaigh Eo, agus chuir sé saothar nua i láthair ag Féile Amharcealaíne TULCA i nGaillimh in 2022. Tacaíonn an Chomhairle Ealaíon, Ealaín na Gaeltachta agus Comhairle Chontae na Gaillimhe lena shaothar.
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