Our 2024/2025 recipients of the awards are:
Ciarán Langford Memorial Bursary Award
Murrough O’Donovan
Murrough O’Donovan is an Irish artist from Skibbereen in West Cork currently based in Cork City. He graduated from Crawford College of Art and Design with First Class Honours in Fine Art in 2024. For his work exhibited in Lest We Salt the Earth the 2024 MTU Degree Show he received the Backwater Studios Ciaran Langford Memorial Bursary and a Graduate Residency in the Sculpture Department of Crawford College of Art and Design.
Michaela McCann
Michaela McCann’s work explores absurdity and unreality through the medium of oil painting and photography. Through the use of techniques such as disjunction and displacement, Michaela conveys a sense of unreality in her work. The imagery in her work creates irrational and dreamlike compositions, giving the work a sense of otherworldliness. Michaela takes inspiration from everyday life, often photographing objects or settings and taking them out of their usual contexts and then combining and juxtaposing them together in order to give the work a bizarre quality and provoke thought in the viewer. Through her work, Michaela aims to challenge social institutions by rejecting the logic and rationality of everyday life and instead embrace the nonsensical.
Fionn Timmins
The inspiration for my work comes from ancient Irish megaliths, such as stone circles, which I create using bog oak. The way these structures are meticulously arranged in our landscape and their connection to celestial objects fascinates me. The symbolism of the Circle and the Sacred Irish Oak Tree are often referred to in our mythology.
The bog oak I use was alive in the Irish landscape during the construction of our great stone circles. My art is a reminder to us of the deep roots in our ancient history and its timeless wisdom that can still resonate with us today.
Lisa O’Sullivan
Lisa O’Sullivan is a visual artist and musician based in Cork city. She is a recent graduate of MTU Crawford College of Art and Design with a First Class Honours in Fine Art. (2024) She works across a variety of media including Printmaking, Drawing, Sound, Video and Photography.
Lisa was awarded a Crawford College of Art and Design Graduate Residency award in Drawing for 2024/2025. Other awards include Cork Printmakers Bursary Award for 2024/2025 Sample studios & Backwater graduate membership awards & MTU exhibition award. She was also longlisted for the RDS Visual Arts Graduate award.
Her work explores the interconnectedness between humans and nature through a lens of folklore & ritual. Her background as a musician is central to this investigation and she is interested in the potential outcomes of incorporating both elements into her practice.
Dee Hurley
I have worked in many design and the arts roles. After studying film production I gravitated towards set design working as a set maker/dresser for film and TV. Later I moved to freelance art facilitation and event management including the curation of the Surface Tension Street Art Festival as part of the European Capital of Culture 2005. I was drawn back to the world of making when I worked as a bookbinder in Hubert’s Bookbindery. In 2020 the part time art textiles course in CCAD opened up the artistic side of making, thinking conceptually and exploring materials, especially my fascination with botanicals.
Another strand in my life has been an interest in ecology and sustainability. The permaculture course in Kinsale College has had a strong influence on me. I have sought to express these themes through art. I have completed a degree in Contemporary Applied Art in MTU Crawford College of Art and Design and intend to further my studies with a Masters by research on the topic of art and ecology.
My practice involves textile art with the use of botanical elements playing a central part. The level of precision involved in bookbinding has translated well into the work I do now involving the presentation of these delicate elements. The decimation of natural habitats has informed my work. I believe a deeper appreciation of the beauty and diversity of our natural world can nurture harmony and respect
Isobel McCarthy
Isobel Mc Carthy is a printmaker based in Cork. She graduated with a first-class honours BA in Fine Art from Crawford College of Art and Design in 2024. Isobel was awarded the Crawford print residency along with the Limerick Printmakers CCAD residency for the academic year of 2024-2025. In 2019, Isobel received her NFC level 5 in Art Portfolio from Coláiste Stiofán Naofa.
Kathy Cronin
My practice investigates human displacement through the curatorial phrasings of my acrylic paintings by encouraging them to assume the form of dwellings. Through expanded display, the paintings echo themes of diaspora by manifesting in unfamiliar territories where they seek sanctuary amidst displacement.
Historically used in transporting goods but also prominent within construction, the hessian material my paintings employ further references both displacement and the domestic.
Through unorthodox phrasings of considered materials and media, my work disrupts preconceptions of painting. This deconstruction nurtures an authentic search for a representation of the maternal home that transcends physical realization and pursues a holistic essence of familial sanctuary.
My figurative paintings embrace visible brushstroke and overlapping composition to resist the stagnancy of refinement, thus infusing the work with a sense of vitality. I draw on sacred texts for inspiration, allowing the ancient allegories to flow through my work into a secular, contemporary context.
Aron O’Connell
Aron O’Connell is an Irish-Hungarian artist who is currently based in Cork City. Aron Graduated from Crawford College of Art and Design in 2024
