Peter Carrington (b. 2002) is from Northern Ireland. He graduated with a BA Hons in Fine Art and is currently studying a Master of Fine Art at Ulster University. 

Carrington explores complexities of traditional childhood play, through examination of aesthetics and motifs surrounding the doll’s house, exposing how the toy acts as a key symbol in highlighting controversial representations of gender roles and stereotypes. His 3D miniature sculptures then critique how toys can mentally condition children to accept aspects of domination and submission, through the traditional roles society often dictates.

He has exhibited in many group shows; most recently ENFOLDED JOURNEYS, touring England and showing in Venice (2024), EMERGENCE VIII, QSS Gallery Belfast and IMPACT 12, International Printmaking Exhibition, UWE Bristol (2022). Carrington has also been awarded the BILL PENNY MEMORIAL AWARD (2024) and has work held in public and private collections.

Janice Cherry’s ceramic sculptures demonstrate her fascination with archaeology and explore the concept of ancestral memory. The sculptures demonstrate the influences of archaeological finds, bog bodies and explore concepts of intergenerational trauma and epigenetics.

The collection focuses on trauma, powerlessness and vulnerability balanced against resilience, hope and love. This current body of work contemplates the sharing of knowledge, skills and resilience to life’s challenges and traumas passed on through memory from our ancestors. Although vulnerable to the effects of trauma we possess enormous capacity to overcome and cope.

Each figure, while created intuitively, suggests individual narratives of pain, trauma, relationships and sharing. Some poses are inspired by yoga, dancing and positive movement and these indicate self-care and hope for recovery. The viewer is invited to consider the contribution which their own ancestors have made to their unique abilities to overcome and celebrate our vulnerabilities and strengths through our shared human experiences.

Michael Flavin (b. 2000, Dublin, Ireland) is a Belfast-based painter, who previously graduated with a BA in Fine Art at NCAD, Dublin.

His practice, rooted in traditional oil painting and materiality, also incorporates drawing and printmaking, often applied in a multi-disciplinary manner. As an undergraduate he specialized in intaglio etching and light-field monotype techniques.

To engage with the art legacy of his late father Flavin undertook a work-study programme with Bronze Art, the foundry founded by his father and spent time in Bologna retracing his father’s footsteps.

In 2023 Flavin took up the ‘Dean Art Studios Graduate Residency Award’ culminating in his debut solo show ‘The Spit of a Paint-Eater’, May 2024.

His work stems from the intertwining of personal narrative and the ‘ineffable’, drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis of Antonin Artaud’s concept of ‘the body-without-organs’ (BwO), from Artaud’s 1947 play ‘To Have Done with the Judgement of God’.

Natalie Gibson (b. 2000, Downpatrick, Northern Ireland) is a painter based in Belfast, who’s practice experiments with painting and drawing elements to investigate the concept of life and death from the perspective of the rural environment. After graduating with a First Class Honours in Fine Art from Belfast School of Art in 2022, Gibson has been in group and solo exhibitions within Belfast and the UK and is a member of the Emerging Artist Program at Flax Art Studio, Belfast. Most notably, Gibson was one of eleven emerging artists across the UK to be awarded

The Freelands Painting Prize in 2022, representing Belfast School of Art alongside fifty Universities.

Most recently: In heart and sorrow (Solo) Engine room Gallery, Belfast (2024), Between sky and earth, Periscope, Gloucestershire (2023), Ephemeral, Arcade Studios, Belfast (2023), Emergence VI, QSS Gallery and studios, Belfast (2023), The Freelands Painting Prize, Freelands Foundation, London (2022).

Nicola Gilmore is a Belfast-based painter currently in the first year of an MFA at Belfast School of Art. Previously, she spent twenty-two years as an art and design teacher before becoming a full-time artist.

Her work explores how memory, subjectivity, and perception shape our understanding of reality. By dissolving boundaries between interior and exterior spaces, she examines how memories surface, dissolve, and intertwine with past imagery, present reality, and imagined futures.

Working in oil on large-scale canvases, Gilmore balances fluid, spontaneous paint application with deliberate mark-making, creating an interplay between opacity and transparency. This evokes a sense of presence and absence, capturing the transient, multi-layered nature of lived experience.

Through immersive compositions, she invites viewers to engage as active participants, exploring the work with curiosity, reflection, and imagination. Beyond the visual, she seeks to evoke visceral, mental, and emotional responses, fostering a deeply immersive and embodied experience.

Gabija Jocyte (b. 2003) is a Lithuanian, Belfast-based installation and performance artist. She received her BA in Fine Art at Belfast School of Art in 2024, where she is currently pursuing her MFA. She has performed at the Belfast International Festival of Performance Art (2023, 2024) and is the recipient of the Bbeyond, Engine Room Gallery, Pollen Studios, Queen Street Studios graduate awards. Her practice manifests through an interdisciplinary approach, merging photography, sculpture and text in exploring the ranging dynamics that can exist between a viewer and an object. Utilising space as a tool for introspection and how voyeuristic relationships can be manipulated through the act of looking. This confessional body of work delves into the unpredictability of memory and questions fabrication vs reality through reflections on heartache, grief and the slivers of solace within the mundane.

Melanie Maurovic is a visual artist based in Belfast. In previous years of her practice, she focused on sculpture and installation, but for MFA, she started to explore video-based artwork. She explores themes of the traumatisation and objectification of the human body by using everyday objects such as fruit and investigating the relationship between the two. Mel explores issues such as mental health and what we do as people with anxiety, obsessive compulsion disorder and/or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, such as self-mutilation, like excoriation disorder, a disorder that causes one to pick at their own skin. Engaging with voyeurism, watching the artist suffer through the commercial-based lens, presenting the fruit that is a nourishing product against painful visuals of the removal of the human skin as equals.

Recently shifting her focus to portraiture, Joelene McAllister exploits the ephemeral qualities of charcoal, chalk and pastels to explore the boundary between representation and abstraction, questioning the reliability of a portrait. She begins by covering the surface in charcoal before removing sections, introducing a sense of light while capturing the subject’s features. McAllister disrupts the image by fragmenting areas, blending, blurring, and using expressive marks to obscure the image. She chooses a limited palette, often working in monochromatic tones to accentuate the distortions within the piece. Through this process, McAllister considers the transitional nature of existence, whereby the subject is neither present nor absent. Drawing on theories from various disciplines, she underlines a state of perpetual liminality, where nothing is stable, leading to continuous uncertainty.

Kevin McCourt is an MFA postgraduate student based between Louth and Belfast. His work explores parameters, emergence, and seriality, engaging with art-historical traditions while interrogating artistic values through process and visual inquiry. His practice examines drawing, painting, materiality, and framing, alongside an exploration of place, non-place, and the dynamics of spatial experience. He considers his work through the lens of intrinsic and extrinsic expectations and how they shape both the production and reception of art. A central concern is framing, not only as a material boundary but as a conceptual device that unlocks the imposition of control, separation, and uniformity within curatorial space. His exploration highlights the frame’s subjective nature, both as an object and in relation to what it contains – or omits. Operating in a liminal space between the pull of anonymity and the artist’s need to be seen, his work examines what emerges when these conditions are scrutinised.

Winifred Oghenerabome Otowa is a Nigerian visual artist currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Fine Arts at Ulster University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Her artistic style embraces the concept that perfection is unattainable. She employs a mix of graphite, charcoal, spray paint, oil, and acrylic on canvas or paper to create instinctive and expressive pieces.

Her work is distinguished by bold, vibrant colors that emphasize the richness and vibrancy of African culture. Through her art, she seeks to convey the resilience and fortitude of African people, particularly women, as many of her paintings focus on female figures. Deeply inspired by African history, she integrates diverse aspects of their lives—their stories, struggles, and triumphs—into her work. Symbolism plays a significant role, bringing forward concepts and ideas that highlight the strength and grace of African women. Ultimately, her art serves as an authentic reflection of her experiences as a Black African.

Kyle Ó Léanacháin is a Belfast-based installation artist who previously studied fine art at Nottingham Trent University. With a focus on the autobiographical, Ó Léanacháin draws from his experiences growing up in diaspora, surviving an RTA, and navigating life as a disabled person as a bridge to exploring relationships between trauma, identity, and self-image via constructed spaces of a primarily domestic nature.

Using DIY methods, Ó Léanacháin’s practice is one of utilising collected materials and repeatable actions in preconceived patterns, allowing process to reveal meaning in materials initially collected through compulsion. The inclusion of chance in Ó Léanacháin’s work reflects his interest in the unpredictable nature of existence.

Alex met Oda Nobunaga recently. Luckily, they knew the general would later be reincarnated as a Shiba Inu called Cinnamon sometime in 2014, so they didn’t feel as bad when they had to decapitate him. He’s probably a lot nicer as a dog. They felt worse chucking an axe in Ivarr the Boneless’ face, even though he started it. He didn’t get reincarnated as a dog, though. Probably a mollusk or something. Does a shell count as a bone? He’s probably a cone snail. Definitely something you step on, and it kills you. Or maybe that flesh-eating amoeba that lives in your boiler and eats your brains clean out of your head. Alex has a headache. Alex demands the immediate dissolution of the American empire. Alex hopes Columbus was reincarnated as something which exclusively circumnavigates its own hole. Alex is 34 and made the thing with all the heads on it.

Olivia Rees (b. 1990, Carmarthen, Wales) is a Belfast-based visual artist working in sculpture and installation. Her practice explores materiality, systems, and the ways nature is represented—and often distorted—across art, media, and culture. With a focus on material experimentation, she examines the shifting relationship between the natural and artificial, drawing from new materialism, systems theory, and relational aesthetics.

A winner of the Porthleven Prize (2022), she was awarded a residency at the Lifeboat Studio in Cornwall, culminating in Origins, exhibited at the Fishbowl Gallery, Falmouth, and the Michael Pennie Gallery, Bath. Since graduating with a First-Class Honours in Contemporary Arts Practice from Bath School of Art (2023), she has exhibited across the UK, including TINCT (Ruup & Form, London, 2024), Bath Open Art Prize (44AD Artspace, 2023), Wales Contemporary (Waterfront Gallery, 2023), and Aquae Sulis (OXO Tower Gallery, London, 2023).

Sandra Streeter, a Colombian artist based in Northern Ireland, explores the relationship between cultural memory, material transformation, and environmental consciousness. Her artistic journey shaped by a long-term illness became both a therapeutic practice and a means of expressing heritage and ecological concerns. Drawing inspiration from the Inca Quipu recording system, she reinterprets its symbolic and structural complexity through sculptural forms that suggest fragility, resilience, and renewal. Her research led to an amazing scientific parallel- a network of galaxy clusters named Quipu, honouring  the interwoven knots of its ancient Andean counterpart. This discovery deepened her inquiry, connecting history and the universe, the tangible and the abstract. Through organic forms symbolizing history’s permanence and celestial structures reflecting existence’s vastness, her work examines the interconnectedness of all things. Navigating tensions between softness and rigidity, ephemerality and permanence, she creates sculptures that express the poetic eternal conversation between materiality, transformation, and evolving narratives.