Congratulations to past pupil Orla Kelly, who was chosen to exhibit her work in the RDS Visual Art Awards Exhibition 2021. From the initial list of 170 entries, 10 artists were selected for inclusion in the exhibition, which is the most important celebration of excellence among visual art graduates in Ireland. The selection process is described by event organisers as “rigorous and challenging” for the applicants. Orla was visited by leading art curators, to whom she gave details of her work, her motivations and inspirations and her ambitions for her arts practice development.
Orla, a graduate from the National College of Art and Design received a joint first-class honours degree in Textiles
Art & Artefact with Critical Cultures. Her current artistic practice is based on storytelling, using textile processes. Her exhibition pieces used tufting to create textile sculptures. Her work focused on the juxtaposition of the soft and delicate textiles with the narrative of her work, which deals with the normalisation of violence against women in popular culture and media.
It was wonderful to see Orla appear in the Irish Times’ Life & Style section on January 1st in their “50 people to watch in 2022: The best young talent in Ireland”. She is currently working from a studio in Dublin’s Block T and is planning to focus on self-organised and artist-run projects in the coming year. This will include a fashion project with fellow NCAD graduate, designer Adam Farrell, and a series of images of people interacting with her work, with photographer Cian Redmond. We wish her every success for 2022 and beyond.