Emma Barrett
Tiernan Donsbach
Adam Garvey
Adam Geaney
Anastasiia Kiriienko
James O’Sullivan
Emma Walsh
Rowan Williams Huber

Natura | Backwater Artists Members Exhibition featuring Debbie Godsell, Dee Hurley, Hina Khan, Julia Mitchell, Chloe Nagle, Kate O’Kelly, Deirdre O’Mahony, Conor O’Brien. Curated by Brian Mac Domhnaill

Main Gallery

23 April – 16 May 2026

Opening reception Thursday 23 April 5.30-7.30pm

This exhibition, curated by Brian Mac Domhnaill, explores the unusual and often strained relationship human beings have with the natural world and how, through the lens of art and other manmade creations, nature is celebrated, analysed, objectified, abstracted or assimilated to communicate a personal or shared response to the world around us. The exhibiting artists are Debbie Godsell, Dee Hurley, Hina Khan, Julia Mitchell, Chloe Nagle, Kate O’Kelly, Deirdre O’Mahony and Conor O’Brien, all of whom have recently become members of Backwater Artists Group, through its studios, artists network and darkroom. Natura is the Latin origin or the word nature, and its original form the word was used to describe the essential qualities of a person or thing and only later, through the lens of philosophy, was it used to describe a whole system of existence or, in a narrower form, all physical life not controlled by humankind.

Debbie Godsell’s work examines our contested historical relationship with the landscape and features elements of history, tradition and customs associated with the harvest, a celebrated example of humanity’s conquering of nature. Dee Hurley collects, arranges and presents botanical samples or artefacts in order to celebrate biodiversity and the beauty and structure of natural forms. Hina Khan uses the landscapes of Pakistani miniature painting as the natural backdrop or stage upon which socio-political issues and humanitarian crises can be portrayed or symbolised. The paintings of Julia Mitchell represent an organic synthesis of the external natural word and artist’s own internal world. Through her photographic practice Chloe Nagle confronts the nature of objects, their familiarity and strangeness and through her images creates monuments to observed things and associated moments of intensity. Similarly Kate O’Kelly explores how identity is shaped by physical objects and environments, encompassing themes of memory, play, our imagination, and the subconscious. Deirdre O’Mahony is interested in the politics of landscape, rural/urban relationships, rural sustainability and food security. Conor O’Brien explores the relationship between marginalised queer bodies and the alien other of science fiction. Their biomorphic creations referred to as Visitors pull on life native to earth such as fungi or marine life, informing the viewer that they are more like us than we might initially think.

Moth | Lynn Marie Dennehy, Andrea Newman, Pádraig Spillane
13 March – 24 April 2026

Opening Reception Thursday 12th March • 6pm
Studio 12 | Tuesday to Friday 10am – 5pm

Curated by Emma Quin for Backwater Artists Emerging Curator Award 2026

Groundbreaking experiments conducted by British geneticist Bernard Kettlewell, building on the earlier work of J.B.S. Haldane, explored the evolutionary changes of the British moth in highly polluted areas. In the 1800s, a black form of the originally white peppered moth began to appear across industrial areas of the UK. This phenomenon, later termed ‘industrial melanism’, created three new species of moths that were darkened in colour due to consistent exposure to pollution in industrial areas, changing their colour from bright amber and white to dark brown. Soot and ash from factories had blackened the tree trunks of the moth’s habitat. This was discovered 10 years before the concept of natural selection was brought forth by Charles Darwin. 

Moths are an impeccable example of adaptive behaviours. They seamlessly blend into their environment, assuming the colour and pattern of any surface to camouflage themselves from predators. They are naturally drawn to places that match their colouring, and during rest, they position their body to further blend into their environment.

Human evolutionary social behaviours do not differ much from those of the moth. Most sociological thinkers, like Chris Cooley, argue that humanity does not exist in a vacuum; rather, the self is created in response to society. Thus, society and the individual are not separate, but rather two complementary aspects of the same phenomenon.

Moving from childhood to adulthood, the individual assimilates into mass culture, regulating their identity and behaviour. Whilst learning expected modes of behaviour can guide us towards what is ‘safe’ and ‘acceptable’ in society, it is hard not to ask what is lost during this process. As the systems of capitalism construct our material reality, what delightfully rough edges of the self are smoothed over by these wider forces? What parts of our innate being are deemed unsavoury, and how does that happen to align with the socio-political, imperial and cultural biases of our time? 

Foucault’s theory of panopticism asserts that individuals can be controlled when they believe themselves to be under constant surveillance, even if no one is watching. Whilst classic panopticism draws from the constructions of prisons and military facilities, Conor Sheridan adapts this theory for our modern times. Information systems and digitised forms of surveillance are creating a new form of decentralised panopticism that we self-enforce. 

Perhaps by externally observing patterns of survival in other species, we can see our own social conditioning more clearly. By interrogating the societal constructions we reinforce, reproduce and perform, often without knowing, this creates room for more expanded, authentic ways of living to emerge or take flight. 

Emma Quin

Emma Quin is a curator and artist based in Belfast. Her practice critically examines how power is exercised within private and public spheres, considering the individual’s conditioning within these structures. Her work employs Marxist thought to dismantle and interrogate societal superstructures, proposing and enacting alternate realities of freedom, authenticity and commonality through collaborative artistic practice.

Emma is a former Director of Catalyst Arts. Recent projects include ‘non-stick frying pan’, an exhibition and public programme examining the western domestic space as an active political site. Her practice is supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

Lynn-Marie Dennehy

Lynn-Marie Dennehy is a visual artist and educator based in Cork. She is an assistant lecturer on the Fine Art and Contemporary Applied Art programmes at MTU Crawford College of Art and Design where she received an MA in Art and Process and a BA(hons) in Fine Art. She is a full-time studio member of both Backwater Artists Group and Cork Printmakers and is an associate member of the National Sculpture Factory and Sample Studios. Her research-based practice investigates the ongoing colonial legacies that exist within our cultural subconscious and navigates the generational legacies that reside in our built environment. Through the lens of Greek mythology, neoclassical architecture, and the history of museums, she creates playful but pointed installation works and experimental exhibitions that serve as test sites for her research. Exhibtions include: The Naked Truth: The Nude in Irish Art, Crawford Art Gallery; [We Must Not Act Like] Children of Our Parents, Studio 12 Gallery(solo); Ah Go On, Cork Printmakers Studio Gallery; Reach Out and Touch Me, St Peters Exhibition Centre

Andrea Newman

Andrea Newman is a visual artist working and living in Cork City. In her work she utilizes lost Irish language to explore Ireland’s current housing crisis. She specifically is interested in documenting socioeconomic issues within this work. She combines photography and print in her work and has explored installation and bookmaking to combine her use of these mediums. Her most recent body of work explored the history of and ongoing neglect of social housing in Mayfield. 

In 2023, she graduated from Crawford College of Art and Design with a first-class honours degree in Fine Art. She was awarded the Ciarán Langford Memorial Bursary with Backwater Studios and the Roberts  Nathan Student of the Year Award with Lavit Gallery. She is a member of Backwater Artists and Sample  Studios. She most recently exhibited at Studio 12 with her solo exhibition, Baile na mBocht, 2024. 

Pádraig Spillane

Pádraig Spillane works with photography, collage, object-based assemblages, and installation. He explores desire through the intersections of imagery and mass-produced cultural forms. He views images as unstable, to be waywardly rearranged beyond their intended meanings and functions. His works are constructed using visual references from commercial display and collective imaginaries, exploring how images generate desires through their complex entanglements. Reorienting the drives and relations from aesthetic elements to consider suggestive potentials, his works perform as assemblies of disruption and appeal.

The core of Spillane’s practice is concerned with how desire functions outside of conventional representations. It looks beyond obvious readings of images and objects to explore psychologies of desire. This is done by exploring connotations and suggestions between commercial advertising imagery and objects, harnessing unexpected juxtapositions and arrangements of contexts. Works create entry points in how images can be viewed as orientation points and affective social surfaces. His works operate as seductive disruptions deployed as prompts to see images and objects outside of their intended uses. 

Selected exhibitions include: A R C H I P  E L A G O, RHA, Dublin, (2025); Periodical Review #14, Pallas Projects/Studios, Dublin, (2024); In Pieces: Navigating the Body in Irish Contemporary Art, Glucksman Gallery, Cork (2024); Skin / Deep: Perspectives on the Body, Photo Museum Ireland, Dublin, (2024); Future Tense, FORMAT Photography Festival, Derby, UK, (2024); Saturation: the everyday transformed, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, (2022); define silver lining V2.0, Cork Centre For Architectural Education, Cork, (2022); Silver-Tongued Sea, Jupiter Woods, London, (2021).

Diverge | Michaela McCann

30 Jan – 6 March 2026

Studio 12 | Tuesday to Friday 10am – 5pm

To diverge is to become different, to change form. This exhibition reflects on the cyclical, transformative nature of life and the process of growth as a fundamental part of the human condition.

Growth requires change, often leaving us in an unfamiliar place. It is in learning to navigate the unknown, we are able to transform. This process is letting go the comfort of what we know, and embracing what is yet to come

This collection of paintings and sculptural works mediates themes of death and rebirth in the context of human growth. This exhibition invites the viewer to step into the unknown and release fears or limiting beliefs. Embrace curiosity and learn without fear.

Michaela McCann is a visual artist based in Sample-Studios, Cork. McCann graduated from MTU Crawford where she achieved a BA(Hons) Fine Art in 2024.Upon graduating McCann received a number of awards including the Painting Residency. Her work has been selected to exhibit in Lavit Gallery’s Summer Exhibition 2025 and an exhibition in Laneway Gallery 2026. She is currently preparing a new body of work for a solo exhibition in Studio 12 January 2026.

McCann’s work is an exploration of the human condition primarily through the medium of oil painting. Centred around ideas of identity, perception and growth, McCann responds to the world she sees around her through unusual subject matter and visual metaphor. By embracing something strange or otherworldly, we learn to try and see things from new perspectives. McCann’s focus on curiosity, uncertainty and navigating the unknown as a part of the human experience encourages us to find commonality between people and speak about our shared experiences.

Inspired by magic realism, psychology and her own lived experience, McCann creates a space for reflection that invites the viewer to see the world from a new perspective and ask questions about what they are seeing. This work is a response to how we process new information in the modern day and how it shapes our thoughts and identities, the polarisation of our society and the shared struggles and endeavours inherent to the human experience. Through her practice, McCann challenges social institutions by rejecting the logic and rationality of everyday life and instead embracing the nonsensical.

Memorial Exhibition
Anna Barden
Lavit Gallery
5 February – 14 February 2026

Opening reception Thursday 05 February, 5.30-6.30pm

The exhibition will take place at Lavit Gallery in collaboration with Backwater Artists Group.

Anna Barden was an artist who worked and lived in Cork city. She passed away unexpectedly on 31 December 2024. This exhibition, organised in collaboration with Backwater Artist Group, friends, family and colleagues, serves as a tribute to Anna and her artistic life and brings together a selection of work by the artist. Anna’s art practice encompassed drawing, painting sewing, short text pieces and ceramics.

Anna was a member of Backwater Artists Network, since its inception in 2020. She exhibited in several Backwater Artists Group member exhibitions including; A Moment Before Lockdown, Studio 12, Backwater Artists Group (2020), Remaining Places, Fota House & Gardens (2021), Drawn Works, The Long Space, Backwater Artists Group (2024) and Deep Time, in Spike Island (2024).  In 2022, she had a solo exhibition in our Studio 12 exhibition/project space, Falter. Check. Resolve which consisted of 18 drawings, 7 ceramic works and an accompanying text drawn on the wall, which served as both statement and memory. The work explored themes of mental illness and chess as seen through the world of Beckett’s ‘Murphy’. In 2024, she was awarded the Backwater Artists Network Residency and had a studio onsite for 6 months. She used the studio consistently and prolifically, to create a large body of work, some of which was due to be exhibited in The Long Space in February 2025. Anna had also exhibited ceramic pieces in the Summer Exhibition at Lavit Gallery in 2023 and had contributed paintings from her Yellow Cup series to the Winter Exhibition shortly before her passing in 2024.

5 – 25 Jan 2026 

During this residency, Siobhán is exploring becoming-with, a term from Donna Haraway that invites us to notice how we grow and change alongside others. With a simple setup of a mirror, a plant, and an easel, she’ll explore the poetic possibilities of becoming-plant, responding to Studio 12’s shifting light, rhythms, and changes in colour and form. This is an experiment in noticing differently—letting the space and the living plant influence the paintings, almost like creating a shared portrait. Towards the end of the three-week residency, she’ll give an artist talk to share the process and chat with peers.