James Barry Exhibition Centre, MTU Bishopstown Campus, Cork
3 Feb – 25 February 2026.
Mon-Fri 11am-4pm
#ASAC #ASAC26
MTU Arts Office’s annual graduate award exhibition focussing on the environment. The title borrows from an old Irish phrase “Ar scáth a chéile a mhairimid”, which can be translated as “We live in each other's shadow”.
Taking a broad view on what constitutes our environment, the exhibition aims to discuss the shadows we cast and the shadows we live with, the impacts our decisions have on each other, our relationship with the wider natural world, and our responsibilities as inhabitants of that world. The exhibition centres on the themes and practices of the selected artists, inviting engagement and conversation
This is the fifth Ar Scáth A Chéile Award Exhibition and presents works from MTU Crawford College of Art & Design 2025 BA Hons. Degree graduates - Aoife Claffey, Fine Art; Katie Drago, Fine Art; Megan Foley, Contemporary Applied Art; Sian Foley, Contemporary Applied Art; Billy Adele O'Regan, Fine Art; and Chieu Phelan, Visual Communications.
Aoife (Beepa) Claffey
BA Hons. Fine Art, MTU CCAD 2025
In my practice I explore false narratives surrounding femininity by combining self-portraiture with print and textiles. My work utilises humour to expose the absurdity of the expectations and stereotypes relating to traditional depictions of femininity in history and media culture.
By subverting these narratives, I invite the viewer to question the artifice of perceived womanliness and the often contradictory expectations placed on women.
The combination of print and textiles serves as a powerful medium to reclaim domestic labour which is historically associated with women, reframing the act as creative resistance. The tactile elements evoke both the weight of tradition and potential for reinterpretation, challenging traditional expectations and gender roles.
Billie Adele
BA Hons. Fine Art, MTU CCAD 2025
Billie Adele is a contemporary artist whose practice celebrates femininity while defiantly challenging patriarchal constraints. A graduate of MTU Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork, with a First Class Honours BA (Hons) in Fine Art, she creates paintings that explore the grotesque, the monstrous feminine, and the transgressive potential of the female body.
Influenced by the occult, sci-fi and horror aesthetics, and strange beauty contraptions from past and present, Billie constructs uncanny, suspended realities where amorphous female forms resist containment and confront systems of control. Her work satirises the chaotic and absurd nature of beauty as ritual, merging macabre humour, theatricality and visceral materiality to transform painting into a performative and alchemical act of becoming.
Grounded in the belief that the body inhabits the spirit, her practice engages in an alchemy of paint, flesh, spirit and lived experience, where paint itself becomes collaborator, a living, shapeshifting vessel of emotion, transformation and resistance. This work engages with and empathises with the monstrous, recognising it as a symbol of transmutable power, tenderness and survival. Through these materially charged worlds, Billie reimagines the grotesque as liberation itself: fluid, embodied and defiantly alive.
billieadele.com
Instagram - @billieadelear
Chieu Phelan
BA Hons. Visual Communications, MTU CCAD 2025
My work is a series of personal reflections on themes of identity, family, and childhood. Through the lens of adoption and the extraordinary connection I share with my sister, I explore what it means to belong — to a family, to a place, and to oneself.
Moving between quiet everyday moments and deeper questions of difference and belonging, this project reflects on the complexities that often go unspoken. It is a reflection about growing up, about finding home not just in others but within oneself, and about the unseen threads that weave our lives together.
chieuphelan@gmail.com
Katie Drago
BA Hons. Fine Art, MTU CCAD 2025
My work is in response to a burial site in my local community – Fermoy – marked in memory of “special babies”. The overgrown grave lies on the grounds of the town’s old workhouse, a section of which was used as accommodation for unmarried mothers and their children.
Today, most of the original workhouse has been demolished, and the forgotten grave is unkept. Despite strong calls made in the Dáil by local TDs, what was once known as the Nursery Rescue Society has never been investigated.
Through extensive archival research, photography, and the collection of natural material from the surroundings of the burial site, I reveal what little information remains about the Fermoy Nursery Rescue Society. My work creates a space of encounter for viewers to consider this neglected history – one that has been sitting, unacknowledged, on the doorsteps of countless communities, waiting for us to let it in.
katiedrago@hotmail.com
instagram.com/katiedrago_art
Megan Fahy
BA Hons. Contemporary Applied Art,
MTU CCAD 2025
As an Irish ceramic artist, my work is inspired by the profound connections we share as humans, particularly the comfort and healing that comes from an embrace. Holding one another has been scientifically proven to enhance feelings of happiness and comfort.
I work with porcelain and earthstone, materials that symbolize the delicate balance between strength and fragility, in both body and spirit. Porcelain, in particular, represents human frailty, in which I use to mirror the vulnerability we experience in the face of loss. An archive of personal photographs informs the pose, gesture and composition of the vessels, with each set representing a significant relationship.
I am hopeful my vessels will remind others of meaningful connections throughout their own lives. The colour pallete is chosen to induce the feelings of comfort, calmness, connection and love.
mfahyart@gmail.com
Instagram - mfahyart
