MTU Gallery at 46 Grand Parade hosts an exhibition of works from the MTU Art Collection. The MTU Art Collection focusses on supporting graduating students from MTU Crawford College of Art & Design through acquisitions of artworks in a broad range of media and now includes over 650 artworks acquired over the last 3 decades.  

This year's exhibition is a selection of work by: Klaudia Lasota, 2022, Ai Wise, Catherine Laisne O'Rourke, 2018, Eamonn Shanahan, 2014, Chris Sophie van der Vlugt, 2022, Aneta Sawicka, 2018, Ana Surdu, 2023, Deirdre Breen, 2020, Sara Gotowska, 2021, Antonia Gerely, 2025, Aidan Crotty, 2004, Michael Rowley, 1997, Amanda Lynch, and Kate Dukelow, 2023. 

For more details and to view the full Collection visit the MTU Art & Culture Website

About artists & work:

Klaudia Lasota, Foxglove #3, Lily of the Valley, & Wolfsbane, Mixed Media on Canvas, 2022.

Artist Statement

The context of my work is based on the idea of death, mortality and fragility of life presented in the form of poisonous flora, creating an immersive poisonous garden. The idea of flora to convey certain messages and feelings can be seen throughout art history from Botticelli’s Primavera to Adriaen Van Utrecht’s Still Life with Flowers and Skull. Even though flora can be poisonous and have the potential to kill, they remain beautiful and fragile. I believe this can be also said about life itself. In my work I use poisonous flora such as nightshades and foxgloves as my main motifs.

Ai Wise, Shift, Mixed Media on Canvas, 2019

Artist Statement

My work has been addressing states of transience and renewal, natural and aesthetic, across form, time and image. I’m interested in the slip and glimpse between representation and meaning, how one might engage with what feels both foreign and familiar, and how objects and spaces take on different meanings in our eyes and minds.

Catherine Laisne O'Rourke, Skin Deep, Oil on Board, 2018.

Artist Statement

Looking at the everyday I enjoy the comforting stillness in observing the mundane. Human shapes speak to me of presence and fathomless emotions. The lenghty process of observing and the state of absorption that both the sitter and myself enter during the process became meditative and non judgmental. I want to resulting image to be revealing of our humanity. Photography and painting expose the duality between the instant visual response and mark making offered by those mediums, exposing mediums, exposing the subjectivity and objectivity of protraiture. Lines, contours, are smudged blurred or accentuated. Limited palette, application, removal of layers, change of scales are used to bring stillness to the mundane. It is said that we know more than we can say. The Work is an attempt to confront our temporality, to dignify the ordinary and to engage the viewer to quietly reflect on our inner camplexity, strength, vulnerability and yearning.

Eamonn Shanahan, Workspace Still V, Framed Silk Hahnemuhle Photograph, 2014

Artist Statement

My work is primarily presented through lens based media dealing with both photography and fine art film. I use performance as a way of representing emotions to identify the conflict between the psychological and philosophical aspects of the human condition. I also adapt lighting as a metaphorical connection between the projected performance and its physical representation presented through symbolic objects. I am influenced by such artists as Lars Von Trier, Maya Deren, Jesper Just and Caravaggio."

Chris Sophie van der Vlugt, Nodule, 2022, Mixed Media

Artist Statement

My work is based on the concept of a disrupted system, influenced by my research on cancer and how cancer distorts systematically. In my works I show systems of repetition, and disrupt these systems either by deformation, addition, or breaking the patterns I create. This undermining of pattern is representative of both the body’s systemic disturbance as well as the microscopic disruption on a cellular level. I use paper mainly as well as porcelain as I feel these materials represent the delicacy of the human body as well as the fragility of its systems.

Aneta Sawicka, Disengage 2 & Poloroids 21-28, 2018,  Photographic Print

Artist Statement

While staying in a hostel during my firstsemester at college in Cork, I walked the streets of the city to avoid being in the hostel, and, in the process of exploring, forging my connection to the city Cork. These images contemplate that initial encounter with place.
Instant photographs document the experience of walking through the city island bounded by the River Lee. This series is a reflection on how the mind records and retains random spontaneous scenes.
A second series of photographs, created using a large format camera, reflects a more considered and thoughtful view of the first impressions indelibly etched in the memory of a recent arrival.
The process dictates engagement with the subject, exploring perception through experience.

Ana Surdu, AFLOAT, Photographic Print, 2023.

Artist Statement

Microplastics have become a component of our water, soil, and organisms and they are an unquestionable intervention in our present geologic period. How will this be recorded by our knowledge and history institutions? How will our Holocene land-fields be represented in the geologic stratigraphic samples? As trilobites were the markers of the Cambrian rock formation, will bottle caps become the alternative stratigraphic marker of our Quaternary period?

My work presents small environs made up from organic replicas in ceramic and glass and the found materiality on various West Cork beaches. These environmental art pieces are an investigation of visual mutations. Curious combinations are presented where mass-produced objects washed by the sea deviously mingle with wonders which belong to the domain of Nature. Appropriating the scientific methods of a natural history museum, the illusory blends between organic and inorganic are labelled and archived. The conflicting materiality displayed in lit cabinets of curiosities (Wunderkammer) or the use of environmental photography, challenge the viewer’s perception as the divide between Naturalia and Artificialia trick the eye.

Deirdre Breen, Bulge, Jesmonite & Mixed Media, 2020

Artist Statement

‘My practice raises questions about our place as embodied humans in the world and the ways we produce, reproduce and consume our material environment. I am exploring the presupposed meanings that we ascribe to matter, and the underlying perceptual structures that support these meanings. The work interrogates a hierarchy of materials, looking at what is disposable and what is venerated, questioning the value of the ordinary and the everyday. In dialogue with disposable culture and commodity fetishism, the ordinary is transformed into the extraordinary. Colours reference trends and conventions of contemporary visual culture. The work aims to suggest a vitality inherent in objects we consider inanimate; industrial and domestic materials are manipulated and redeployed to subvert our associations to their familiar qualities, confronting our understanding of our material reality. A gestural language emanates from the artworks; forms demonstrate object attributes and emulate personality, but lack obvious functionality, existing for their illusionary qualities rather than a perceived use. A lively aesthetic speculates on the agentive power of ‘things’, so that a material imagination might unfold’

Sara Gotowska, Untitled 3,  White wool/viscose felt, Batik dyes (powder), silk cocoon strippings, fabric starch(powder) & small beads, 2021

Artist Statement

My work is based on the Wabi Sabi philosophy, the ‘perfect imperfection’.

I look at and examine objects that are viewed as “ugly”, “unattractive”  or “disturbing” encouraging  the viewer to see a deeper meaning in the objects and focus on the way things are, rather than how they should be, seeing the beauty within.

On a deeper level my work deals with human imperfections, how certain experiences from our past can cause scars and damage to us physically and mentally, realizing the beauty from something that’s “broken” and “imperfect”.

Currently my work deals with beauty and decay, the acceptance of the natural cycle of growth, decay and death and bringing out the hidden beauty.

I use mixed media in my work but mainly I work with textile materials such as, fabrics, fibres, handmade paper and different types of dyes (both natural and artificial).

Antonia Gerely, Driving Simulator, Oil on Canvas, 2025

Artist Statement

Through the slow process of painting, my practice draws attention to easily overlooked digital pop-ups. Using oil paint on unprimed cotton muslin gives my work a texture and physicality not found on screens and creates a disruptive veil over the real environment.

As the seemingly eternal digital world decays in neglected web links, the oil-soaked cotton will degrade over time. Captcha pop-ups are of particular interest due to their illicit use to collect individuals’ data and turn a profit for technology and automation industries.

These paintings encourage a reflection on the future of our digital autonomy. I hope to reframe perceptions of the digital and encourage a slowed, deliberate viewing of pop-ups, while revealing just how influential yet fragile these imposing structures truly are.

Aidan Crotty, Mime, I , Mixed Media on Paper, 2004

Michael Rowley, Untitled, Mixed Media on Paper, 1997

Amanda Lynch, Tír na mBeo, Oil on Canvas, 2017

Rural Ireland’s beauty is compromised by the lack of opportunity it gives to the youth of today. The remote characteristics it can have can ultimately have a psycological effect on people in which dwell in a rural location.
The work deals with the Social and Psycological aspects of rural Ireland. The work looks at a personal journey of moving from a rural part of Ireland to a city. Looking at places where there is a feeling of abandonment and isolation and comparing it to urban living. The work tells a story many people experience today and looks at how living in a certain location can have a particular affect on a person.

Kate Dukelow, Saturday, Photograph, 2023

Artist Statement

My work focuses on the everyday, particularly the beauty in the mundane, and expressing what I see. I purposely use analogue photography with a range of display methods. My view of the world is grainy due to my visual snow. The grain of photographic film is and so it’s more entwined to how I experience the world around me. My photographs take the form of 2D prints with clear wall hangings to showing my hand in the process of installation. I explore the passing of time, in everyday, doing so by taking images of the same item or scenario each day. I am drawn to colour, architecture, flowers and formal lines. I portray my subjects in an intimate and, documentary style showing the spaces I occupy. I aim to encapsulate the act of looking for myself. I play with the concept of what someone surrounds themselves with and what they notice first in an environment. I rarely shoot self-portraits, though my photographs act as self-portraits through the acts of looking and photography. With them grouped together for installation, these images act as one.