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 IMMA, Dublin; Kerlin Gallery, Dublin; MoMA PS1, New York; ACCA, Melbourne; Tate, St Ives; ICA, Philadelphia; Modern Art Oxford; Turner Contemporary, Margate; the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol and Camden Arts Centre, London. Cross has recently shown at 25th Biennale of Sydney; Archaeological Museum, Zagreb, Croatia; Worchester College, University of Oxford, UK (2026); Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Bremen; Crawford Art Gallery, Cork (2024); Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh; Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham UK; Cinili Hamam, Istanbul; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin (all 2023). Cross has participated in the Venice, Sydney, Istanbul and Liverpool biennales and the Folkstone Triennale.

Mark Francis
b. 1962, Newtownards, Northern Ireland. Lives and works in London, UK

Mark Francis makes powerful, optically intense paintings that are driven by the revelatory insights of contemporary science. Filled with a sense of movement and vibrational energy, his paintings combine electric colour contrasts with dynamic patterns and precise brushwork. Fields of colour are shot through with orbs or pulsating linear forms that dissolve or disintegrate, mimicking streams of light, sonic vibrations, or graphs of seismic patterns. Francis’s longstanding fascination and engagement with science provides rich territory for his painting, from the vast cosmic terrains of astronomy, to the minute and molecular concerns of mycology. Making striking imagery out of what is normally invisible, he explores the visual worlds made accessible by electron microscopes, or sonic data gathered from outer space. But while the feats of manmade technology inform Francis’s work, the thing of wonder remains the unknowable quantities beyond their reach. This is what Francis uses his imaginative power and painterly skills to conjure – sparking a tension between order and chaos, knowledge and mystery that is at the heart of his work.

Mark Francis’s work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, Brooklyn Museum; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, New York; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Tate, London and Liverpool; Whitechapel Gallery, Design Museum, and the Royal Academy in London; The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin; Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin. Current and recent exhibitions include TRACING ECHOES, Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, Ireland (2026); YBA’s and Beyond (Tate Touring Show), National Art Centre, Tokyo, Japan, travelling on to Kyocera Museum of Art, Kyoto City, Japan (2026).Collections include Tate, London; V&A, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; Museum of Modern Art, Miami and the Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri.

In 2026, Francis is representing the Republic of San Marino at the 61st Venice Biennale.

Callum Innes
b. 1962, Edinburgh, Scotland. Lives and works in Oslo, Norway and Edinburgh, Scotland

Callum Innes creates abstract paintings that carry a powerful tension between control and fluidity. Dissolution is central to his practice: layers of deep pigments are brushed over with turpentine, breaking down sections of paint and leaving watery, trace elements, before being painted over again. Repeating this process of painting, dissolving and repainting multiple times, Innes builds depth and a sense of history: oblique panels of dense pigments become embedded and fortified, while tiny trickles or rivulets of liquified paint point to their underlying fragility. This meticulous approach to materials is carried across into the artists ’watercolours and pastels, in which pigment is built up into velveteen layers. Though Innes’ s works may seem minimal or geometric at first glance, they are in fact always slightly “off kilter”, governed by imperfectly drawn lines and slightly softened shapes. This fallibility and humanity, put in contrast with the artist’s skill and precision as a painter, results in works of great poetic and contemplative power – cementing Innes’s place as one of the most significant abstract painters of his generation.

Callum Innes has been the subject of solo exhibitions at De Pont Museum, Tilburg; Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco; Kunsthalle Bern; Neues Museum, Nürnberg; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; the ICA, London; the Scottish National Gallery, and the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh; Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; Modern Art Oxford; the Whitworth, Manchester; IMMA, Dublin; Château La Coste, Provence and Kode, Bergen. His work can be found in the collections of Albright-Knox, Buffalo; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; Museé des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne; National Galleries of Australia, Canberra; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York and Tate Gallery, London.

Kathy Prendergast
b. 1958, Dublin, Ireland. Lives and works in London, UK

Intimate in tone and subject matter, Kathy Prendergast’s practice combines drawing, sculpture and installation. What might appear minimal or elusive at first glance can encompass a complex web of emotional, personal and political resonances. Proximate to the body and connecting subjective reflections on the world, her work explores a potent cluster of issues including power, identity, landscape, memory, geography, and family. A connection between the body and landscape, often manifested through mapping, can be traced back to the beginning of her practice. Often using redaction or removal as a device, creating negative space through black ink, coloured paint or white paper, the artist erases or overwrites geographic expressions of power. Prendergast points out the subjectivity of maps, their inherent colonialism, and the ultimate fragility of borders and territories over time. Though delicate, fragile and usually on a human scale, her works also point towards the infinite – suggesting the vastness of space or the constellations of the sky. Prendergast’s work is methodical – the product of slow, repetitive processes requiring patience, precision and devotion. Faithful to mark-making, drawing and hand-crafting as well as the revelatory potential of sparking unfamiliar connections with everyday objects, her work is enigmatic, eerily beautiful and emotionally resonant.

Kathy Prendergast’s solo exhibitions include Tate Britain, Camden Arts Centre, and Southbank Centre in London; Nottingham Contemporary, UK; Kunst-Station St. Peter, Cologne; the Irish Museum of Modern Art; Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Crawford Art Gallery, Cork. She has also exhibited at PS1 and the Drawing Centre, New York; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; the ICA, Boston; Chicago Cultural Centre, Chicago; Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis; and Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai. Biennales and repeating exhibitions include EVA International; the British Art Show; the 13th and 14th Sydney Biennales and the Yokohama Triennale. In 1995, Prendergast represented Ireland at the 46th Venice Biennale and won the prestigious Premio 2000 (Best Young Artist).