Dorothy Cross
b. 1956, Dublin, Ireland. Lives and works in Connemara, Ireland

Working in sculpture, film and photography, Dorothy Cross examines the relationship between living beings and the natural world. Living in Connemara, a rural area on Ireland’s west coast, the artist sees nature, the ocean and the body as sites of constant change and flux. Her works harness this fluidity and generative power, staging unexpected encounters between plants, animals, body parts and everyday objects, resulting in strange, hybrid forms that range from the lyrical, sublime and meditative, to the erotic, humorous and playful. Her sculptures might incorporate classical materials such as Carrara marble, cast bronze or gold leaf alongside discarded antiques, old boats, washed-up jellyfish, whale bones or animal skins found on the shore. Treating these materials with equal reverence, Cross honours the legacy of art history but also the geological and ecological histories that far predate it, reflecting upon our place within the environment. Her works also draw upon a rich store of symbolic associations across cultures to investigate the construction of religious, social and sexual mores, subjectivity, memory and vulnerability.

Dorothy Cross has exhibited in museums including MoMA PS1; ACCA, Melbourne; Tate, St Ives; ICA, Philadelphia; Modern Art Oxford; Turner Contemporary, Margate; the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol and Camden Arts Centre, London. Cross has participated in the Venice, Sydney, Istanbul and Liverpool biennales and the Folkstone Triennale.

Justin Fitzpatrick
b. 1985, Dublin, Ireland. Lives and works in Paris, France

Justin Fitzpatrick works with painting, sculpture, text and, most recently, video to explore human consciousness through the prism of biology. He presents us with elaborate and fantastical paintings of mysterious figures and mutating forms; sinewy lines evoke art nouveau detailing, fused with gothic and macabre elements. Much of his work contains figurative elements transformed into static, infrastructural ones: the bodies of men become mechanical, forming spaces to inhabit or transit upon. Highly stylised musculoskeletal structures seem visible through the skin, while ornate, vegetal forms and insects link his subjects to the earth, or point towards the interconnectedness of different species. Fitzpatrick’s work is informed by the science around cellular structures (in particular, mitochondria), metaphysical poetry, mythologies, and an array of archetypal figures, often viewed through a lens of class and sexuality.

Born in 1985 in Dublin, Ireland, Justin Fitzpatrick attended St. Oswald’s School of Painting in London from 2004–2007 and earned his MA in Fine Art Painting from the Royal College of Art in London in 2015. Recent solo exhibitions include A Musical Instrument, Kerlin Gallery; Ballotta, La Ferme du Buisson, Paris (both 2024); Ballotta, Seventeen Gallery, London; Mitochondrial Abba, Margot Samel, New York (both 2023); Alpha Salad, The Tetley, Leeds; Angiosperme Telephone, Sultana Gallery, Paris (both 2022). Recent group exhibitions include Arcanes, Rituels et Chimères, FRAC Corsica (2024).

Liam Gillick
b. 1965, Aylesbury, UK. Lives and works in New York, USA

One of the most important figures in international contemporary art, Liam Gillick works across diverse forms, including sculpture and installation. A theorist, curator and educator as well as an artist, his wider body of work includes published essays and texts, lectures, curatorial and collaborative projects, all of which inform (and are informed by) his art practice. Gillick’s line of enquiry is into conditions of production, including how it continues to operate in a post-industrial landscape: questions of economy, labour and social organisation are ongoing preoccupations. He is perhaps best-known for producing sculptural objects – platforms, screens, models, benches, prototypes, signage, or structural supports made from sleek modular Plexiglas and aluminium forms in standardised colours from the RAL system. These seductive materials speak the language of renovation and development: originally refined by the military, they’ve been widely used in corporate interiors since the 1990s, a decade in which post-industrial societies saw a shift from the collective to the individualist and privatised. Drawing upon engineering and industrial design as well as the legacy of hard-edged minimalism, these abstract quasi-architectural forms offer a critique of neo-liberal or corporate aesthetics, automation and endless (re)development. Focusing on secondary or incomplete forms such as screens and platforms, Gillick pinpoints structures which have the potential to destabilise the power of architecture and the architecture of power, creating generative spaces for discussion or the development of ideas.

Liam Gillick has had solo exhibitions in many of the world’s leading museums, including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Pergamon Museum, Berlin; Kunsthalle Zürich; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Witte de With, Rotterdam; Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn; Sankt Peter, Cologne; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Kunsthaus Zürich; MAGASIN, Grenoble; Madre Museum, Naples; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Tate Britain, London; IMMA, Dublin; Potter Museum, Melbourne and Gwangju Museum of Art, Korea. 

Merlin James
b. 1960, Cardiff, Wales. Lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland

Merlin James approaches the history and legacy of painting with a highly considered and unconventional viewpoint. Generally small in scale, his works depict diverse subject matter including vernacular architecture, riverside views, post-industrial landscapes, empty interiors, mysterious figures and scenes of sexual intimacy. James has a deep engagement with the history of art and this knowledge shapes and informs his practice. His works refine and renew many of painting’s most time-honoured concerns – genre and narrative, pictorial space and expressive gesture, the emotive resonance of colour and texture.

Merlin James’s solo exhibitions include at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; Venice Biennale, Wales Pavilion; Sikkema Jenkins, New York; KW Institute, Berlin; Kunstsaele, Berlin; CCA, Glasgow; Kunstverein, Freiberg; Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; OCT, Shunde & Shenzhen; Anton Kern, New York; Philadelphia Art Alliance. Selected international collections include Tate, London; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, China and National Museum of Wales, Cardiff.

Brian Maguire
b. 1951, Dublin, Ireland. Lives and works in Dublin and Paris

Brian Maguire’s painting practice is driven by the struggle against inequality and violence, and the pursuit of justice. Compelled towards the raw realities of human conflict, Maguire approaches painting foremost as an act of solidarity, rehumanising his subjects and recentring the narratives of the disenfranchised. Social engagement plays a central role, leading him to work closely and interactively with refugees, survivors of warzones, incarcerated peoples, and local newsrooms in locations including Sudan, Syria, São Paulo and Ciudad Juárez. This subject-led approach requires negotiating an exchange, establishing a method of working that attempts to “repay the debt” to its subjects. Maguire’s direct observation of conflict zones puts his practice adjacent to forms of war reporting or photojournalism, but while his artworks begin as acts of bearing witness, his task in the studio is to transform his testimony into blisteringly powerful works of art. There is a resulting tension between the raw and visceral nature of Maguire’s subject matter and the seductive, illusory nature of painting itself. Rather than abandoning aestheticism, Maguire uses painterly skill, surface and texture to draw us into an uncomfortable relationship in which ethical vision functions as part of the poetic imagination, resituating art in the concrete social structures from which it is so often removed.

Maguire is currently subject of a major solo touring exhibition, La Grande Illusion, touring from Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin (2024–25), to University of South Florida Art Museum, Tampa, USA (29 August – 6 March2026) and Santiago Museum of Contemporary Art, Chile in 2026. Recent exhibitions include Converge 45, a biennial exhibition curated by Christian Viveros-Faune, Portland, USA; recent solo exhibitions include law of the land, Kunsthall 3,14, Bergen; The Clock Winds Down, Kerlin Gallery (both 2023); In The Light of Conscience, Missoula Art Museum, Montana (2022); Remains, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork (2021–2022); Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, USA (2021); American University Museum, Washington DC and United Nations Headquarters, New York, USA (both 2020); Rubin Center, Texas University, USA (2019); Art Museum Ciudad Juárez, Mexico (2019) and Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2018). Maguire’s work is represented in the collections of Irish Museum of Modern Art; The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin; the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork; Museum of Fine Art Houston; the University of Chicago; Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag; Alvar Alto Museum, Finland and The Tia Collection, Santa Fe.

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain
b. 1978, Clare, Ireland. Lives and works in Cork, Ireland

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain is an Irish artist working with film, computer-generated imagery, collage, tapestry, print and installation. Ní Bhriain’s work is rooted in an exploration of imperial legacy, human displacement and the Anthropocene. These intertwined subjects are approached through an associative use of narrative and a deeply crafted visual language that verges on the surreal. She sidesteps directive positions and familiar binaries, exposing instead the layers of ambiguity and contradiction embedded in these fraught issues. The resulting worlds she creates are at once idiosyncratic, irresistible and unsettling. 

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain’s work has been shown widely internationally, at venues including Broad Museum, Michigan; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Hammer Museum, LA; Istanbul Modern, Turkey; Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; and Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, France; the 16th Lyon Biennale and the 3rd Lahore Biennale. Recent solo exhibitions include The Dream Pool Intervals, The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin (2025); Inscriptions VI, Lismore Castle Arts, Ireland (2025); An Experiment with Time, Kunsthal Gent, Belgium (2024); Kerlin Gallery (2023); CCA Glasgow (2022). Public collections include Dallas Museum of Art; MAC Lyon; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin; Ulster Museum, Belfast; Crawford Art Gallery, Cork; Trinity College Dublin; and The Arts Council of Ireland.

Daniel Rios Rodriguez
b. 1978, Killeen, Texas. Lives and works in San Antonio, Texas.

Guided by meditations on dreams, Daniel Rios Rodriguez’s exuberant semi-figurative paintings combine images of nature with fantastical visions that reflect upon the artist’s identity and personal experience. His coarse layers of impasto paint embellish wood panels in offbeat shapes – tilting rectangles, or solar, starburst forms with jagged edges. These constructions often bear impromptu frames, built from frayed strips of rope, nails or copper wire, introducing a collaged, sculptural element to the work. Rios Rodriguez introduces us to a rich world of imagery from his inherited and personal cultural identity as a Mexican-American. His paintings present an unconventional treatment of time-honoured subjects, created with a fascinating array of non-traditional materials that speak to the particular locality of his Texan environment and yet resonate far and wide.

Daniel Rios Rodriguez’s work has been exhibited at Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Camden Arts Centre, London; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Yale University, New Haven, Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago and McNay Art Museum, San Antonio. Selected solo exhibitions include Ruby City, San Antonio (2025-26); Kerlin Gallery (2021); Art Pace, San Antonio, Texas (2019); Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas (2018); McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas (2015) and White Columns, New York (2011). In 2018, Rios Rodriguez was artist-in-residence at Chinati Foundation, Marfa.