The winners of the 2024 RDS Visual Art Awards were announced at the annual ceremony on November 22. Among the talented creators awarded on the night is queer artist Ava Lowry, who won the R.C. Lewis-Crosby Award.
This year’s ceremony took place at the RHA Gallery in Dublin, launching the nine-week exhibition that will showcase the emerging Irish artists. Hosted by Chairperson of the RDS Foundation Board, Dr Andrew Power, the event featured two live performances by artist Mary Madeleine McCarroll and Derry performer Cahal O’Connell as his drag persona Miss Mary Jane.
10 emerging artists, including O’Connell himself and fellow queer creator Stell De Burca, were shortlisted for this year’s awards, which aim to showcase the best of visual art graduates in Ireland. A judging panel of five visual art professionals then reviewed the shortlisted candidates and finally selected the six winning artists.
Among the winners of the 2024 RDS Visual Art Awards is Ava Lowry, a visual artist who works with combined media, focusing primarily on watercolour and oil paint on canvas. Her art explores themes related to the human body, intimacy and physicality within relationships and the self.
As described in her own words, she paints “queer female-centric naked pieces that both aim to work within and against the traditional nude genre and ideas of conventional viewership and the male gaze, while employing traditional methods of painting.”
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Ava won the R.C. Lewis-Crosby Award, created by the former President of the RDS and Taylor Art Trustee for many years. The award was formerly a painting prize, but open to all visual art forms in recent years, carrying a €5,000 cash prize.
Commenting on Ava’s work, the judging panel said, “Ava produces a complete body of work that demonstrates an emotional intimacy. Her beautiful composition is a gorgeous tender study of a woman’s body by another woman. She is very assured and emotionally engaged in her practice which brings this body of work beyond just being so technically assured.”
The other winners of the 2024 RDS Visual Art Awards were Sorcha Browning, who won the RDS Taylor Art Award and the RDS Graphic Studio Dublin Emerging Visiting Artist Award; Keara Simonsen, who won the RDS Members’ Art Fund Award; Fionn Timmins, who won the RDS Mason Hayes & Curran LLP Centre Culturel Irlandais Residency Award; and Mary Madeleine McCarroll, who won the RHA Graduate Studio Award.
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Commenting on this year’s winners, the RDS Visual Art Awards judging panel 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 exhibition will remain open at the RHA Gallery for nine weeks, closing on January 18, 2025. More information is available here.
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