Winners of RDS Visual Art Awards 2024 announced

The winners of the annual RDS Visual Art Awards have been announced, celebrates ten emerging Irish artists coming into the professional visual arts sector.

This year, the RDS Visual Art Awards has partnered with the RHA (Royal Hibernian Academy) for the 2024 exhibition, which runs at the RHA's Dublin city gallery until January 2025.

The RDS Taylor Art Award is awarded as first prize in the RDS Visual Art Awards to the person the judges believe to be the most promising emerging visual artist in that year, offering a cash prize of €10,000.

Awarded since 1860, this year's winner is Sorcha Browning, who joins a prestigious list of previous awardees that includes Walter Osbourne, William Orpen, Mainie Jellett, Norah McGuinness, Séan Keating, Dorothy Cross and James Hanley.

A graduate of TU Dublin School of Creative Arts, Sherkin Island, Sorcha's installation Eden. mirrors the fixed perspective of representational painting to allow each character’s performance to play out simultaneously.

The R.C. Lewis-Crosby Award, with a cash prize of €5,000, was awarded to Ava Lowry, a recent graduate from TUS Limerick School of Art and Design in 2024. A visual artist working primarily in painting. her work explores the human body, physicality within relationships and the self, and the interplay between the corporeal body and the concept of 'home,' capturing an overarching sense of intimacy through the work.

Other winners included artists Keara Simonsen (the RDS Members' Art Fund Award), Fionn Timmins (the RDS Mason Hayes & Curran LLP Centre Culturel Irlandais Residency Award) and Mary Madeleine McCarroll (the RHA Graduate Studio Award) and Sorcha Browning (the RDS Graphic Studio Dublin Emerging Visiting Artist Award)

Commenting on the talent this year, the 2024 RDS VAA judging panel, chaired by Mary McCarthy said; "As a jury we were bowled over by the diversity and quality of all the shortlisted artists. The exhibition demonstrates the significance of the RDS Art Awards and how quickly it has established itself as a key cultural moment in the Irish Visual art scene. The works engage with contemporary issues of identity, environment and the body politic. We anticipate they will resonate with the exhibition's various publics. We are very excited about the future of Irish art based on this exhibition."

The 2024 RDS Visual Art Awards exhibition is at the RHA Gallery Dublin until January 18th 2025 - find out more here.