RHA’s exhibition of emerging artists re-commences this March. The first series took place in June 2001, now fifteen years later we think it is as challenging and as exciting as ever. Over the past three years a new group of artists have emerged (and remember nearly all of our Futures exhibitions are inter-generational). This will be the first of three annual shows looking at the diversity and range of this next wave. Futures, Series 3, Episode 1 will include work by artists Richard Forrest, Kevin Gaffney, Ann Maria Healy, Elaine Hoey, Ali Kirby, Jane Locke and Jane Rainey.

Jane Rainey from Belfast who recently completed her MA at NCAD is the only painter in the exhibition. Mixing abstract and figurative elements, her spectrum of colours together with her agitated and deft brushwork sets her apart. New media is challenged in the work of Richard Forrest and Elaine Hoey. Forrest utilities new media and sculpture to tackle issues of human perception and technology’s role in altering our perceptual and cognitive experiences, Hoey’s 8 minute Virtual Reality film bends the will of gaming technology to create a powerful narrative on one of the most poignant issues of our times, migration.

Jane Locke brings her draftsmanship and scholarship to create a unique combination of drawing and quirky history. Kevin Gaffney, being awarded winner of the Sky Academy Arts Scholarship in 2015 enabled him to make his most recent film A Numbness in the Mouth, which will have its first Dublin showing at the RHA. Ann Maria Healy’s practice is concerned with narrative and a re-working of historical tropes, with issues of gender representation as paramount. Ali Kirby creates complex sculptural assemblages and installations that respond instinctually to the built environment, using reappropriated and reworked materials.