SO Fine Art Editions presents New Wave: Peter Bradley, Niall Cullen, Karl Hagan, James Kirwan and John O’Flynn

SO Fine Art Editions is excited to present ‘New Wave’, a group exhibition featuring the work of five leading contemporary Irish artists: Peter Bradley, Niall Cullen, Karl Hagan, James Kirwan and John O’Flynn. Though each brings a distinct voice, they share a deep engagement with identity, memory and perception. Their practices, spanning painting, mixed media, digital collage and sculpture, push beyond traditional methods, merging personal experience with broader cultural or imagined contexts. Moving between the real, the imagined and the abstract, each artist invites us to re-examine how we experience place, time and human connection. Together, they offer new perspectives on the fleeting and complex nature of contemporary life, demonstrating how art can connect the personal and universal, questioning how we see ourselves, each other and the world around us.

Peter Bradley is a Galway-based painter and mixed-media artist working primarily with the human figure to explore themes of identity, gender and self-expression beyond the binary. Using fashion, abstraction and visual layers that play with transparency, reflectivity and flatness, he redefines portraiture to challenge perception and celebrate diversity. His award-winning work – including the Anita Young Bursary Award, the R.C. Lewis Crosby Award for painting, and shortlisted for both the Zurich and Hennessy Portrait Prize – has been widely exhibited across Ireland. Bradley invites viewers to reflect on the ever evolving realisation that gender, sex and sexuality exist on a spectrum and on the shared impact of human interaction and connection.

Niall Cullen is a contemporary visual artist from Dublin whose multidisciplinary practice constructs narratives through the convergence of diverse source materials, including mythology, meme culture, personal memory and internet-sourced material. A first-class honours graduate in sculpture from NCAD, his work explores identity, urban subcultures and the re-appropriation of data and imagery, inviting reflection on how cultural fragments interact to generate new and evolving meanings.

Karl Hagan’s paintings merge imagery with abstraction, layering photography and digital collage to reveal hidden narratives. Fragmented forms and distorted figures echo the shifting nature of memory and the subconscious, capturing the fleeting and ambiguous qualities of human experience. A Belfast-based painter and Ulster University graduate, Hagan has exhibited widely, including Platform Arts Belfast, Queen Street Studios Gallery, the Engine Room Gallery and the British Embassy Gallery in Beijing, and is Artist in Residence at Belfast School of Art.

James Kirwan’s new works explore the intersection of three distinct spatial anchors: lived reality, imagined landscapes and memories of place. He investigates how the mind constructs and reconstructs ‘place’, drawing on childhood experiences in Lesotho and his current rural surroundings. Using experimental painting techniques, bold colours and abstract forms, he reimagines landscapes as abstracted, fictional worlds. Wexford born, Kirwan has exhibited widely in Ireland and abroad, with murals from Canada to Dún Laoghaire, often reflecting his deep interest in nature, exploration and shared human curiosity.

John O’Flynn explores rare, fleeting moments of vivid nostalgia and profound hope – memories that feel both magical and elusive. Using spray paint, watercolour and sculpture, his work draws on a background in graffiti, street art and industrial design. Referencing the DART railway line, O’Flynn explores landscapes, light and introspection, creating artworks that capture moments as they are experienced, not simply as they are seen. Originally from Galway and now based in Dublin, O’Flynn is a Fine Artist and Designer whose work resonates with audiences worldwide.