Each year GOMA Waterford aims to highlight the wealth of talent graduating annually in Ireland by awarding selected graduates with an exhibition. This year, three artists have been chosen for the award: Elaine Somers-Cashen, Leslie Allen Spillane and Fionn Timmins.

A recent graduate of Visual Art from SETU Waterford, Elaine Somers-Cashen is a visual artist based in county Wexford. Her work examines contemporary Irish landscape through the lens of a constantly evolving rural farm environment by focusing mainly on the trees that are a staple on all farms and land throughout the Irish countryside.

This body of work sees Elaine exploring large-scale drawings on fabriano paper that is coated in layers of charcoal. Her chosen medium of charcoal is importantly sourced from the native trees on the farm where she lives, using a method of erasing to construct her imagery. As a fourth generation inhabitant of this land, she aims to document and make visual the subtle and ever evolving and changing cartography of the environment that surrounds us.

Leslie Allen Spillane is a recent graduate of MTU Crawford College of Art and Design. She works primarily in lens-based media using a variety of alternative photographic techniques and printmaking. She is interested in environmentally sustainable photographic processes and the relationship between the human body and the natural world. Using homemade plant-based chemistry to develop and print her images, Allen Spillane explores different plant’s properties and remedies as a metaphor for conveying psychological and emotional states.

Follow her on Instagram @leslie_allen_spillane

Waterford artist Fionn Timmins graduated from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design in 2024. He works primarily with sculpture and uses video and sound to support this practice. His work considers our relationship with the landscape by addressing and reinterpreting references to Irish folklore and ancient Irish megalithic forms, such as stone circles and dolmans. Working primarily with ancient bog oak – a material that would have been alive in the landscape during the construction of these ancient sites – his sculptures draw on the symbolism of the circle and the Sacred Oak Tree, often referred to in Irish mythology.

After his degree show Fionn won numerous awards including a residency in the National Sculpture Factory, Cork where he has since produced new work. He was also selected for the RDS Visual Arts Awards which is currently running until January 18th 2025. From this he was awarded the RDS Mason Hayes & Curran LLP Centre Culturel Irlandais Residency in Paris which will commence in May 2025.