We aim to establish long-term relationships with artists through our residency programme and provide support and mentorship to emerging artists as well as logistical support from Galway Arts Centre’s programming, technical and front-of-house team.
Creating specific opportunities for early career artists in diversity and inclusion by working with local, national and international partners is another key aim of the programme.
Residencies last up to four months, and we provide an artists’ bursary along with access to a downstairs, desk-based studio with its own entrance in Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick Street. We are also developing models of residencies working with artists who do not require studio space.
Upcoming Artists in Residence 2023
In 2023, we aim to open a number of Artist in Residence opportunities, created in partnership with strategic local and national partners.
Please sign up to our mailing list to keep up to date with our current opportunities.
Bryan Gerard Duffy
Image Credit: Bryan Gerard Duffy.
Galway Arts Centre in partnership with Interface
Bryan Gerard Duffy is a multi-disciplinary artist working in paint, sculpture, lens-based work, moving image, and installation. He draws lines and also crosses lines, both physically and metaphysically, while investigating psychological and physical displacement.
He is a graduate of the National College of Art and Design, Dublin and is now based in Mayo. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including upcoming solo shows in the Ballina Arts Centre (2025), the Custom House Studios and Gallery, Westport (2024), and GOMA Gallery Of Modern Art, Waterford (2024). His work was also selected for the 193rd RHA annual exhibition (2023). Duffy has shown his work throughout Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Australia, and the United States.
Duffy was a recipient of the PLATFORM 31 award (2022) from Local Arts Ireland and the Arts Council of Ireland; the Mayo County Council Tyrone Guthrie Residency Award (2022); and the recipient of the Bolay Residency Award, Castlebar, Ireland (2020).
He has been awarded numerous grants from the Arts Council of Ireland, including the Travel and Training award to participate in Artifariti Arts Festival in Algeria and Western Sahara (2017). A recent public art project includes the “Art Roundhouse” G.E.T.N.S. Commission, Newcastle, Galway, Ireland, funded through the Irish Department of Education Per Cent for Art Scheme (2020). In 2021, he was elected to the Board of Trustees at the Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar, Ireland.
Duffy has also been the recipient of multiple national and international awards for his films, including being shortlisted for the Best Irish Human Rights Short Documentary with Sumud, Everyday Resistance at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) awards (2016), and receiving Bronze Medal Award at the Global Independent Film Awards for his film Delivery. (2021).
Bryan Gerard Duffy will be artist in residence with the Galway Arts Centre from 17th to 31st July.
Magdalena Hylak
Image Credit: Photo: Avi Ratnayake
Dancer in Residence 2023-2024 in partnership with Galway County Council and Galway Dance Project
Magdalena Hylak is a dance artist and choreographer. From June 2023 to March 2024, she will develop her dance practice in the city and the county, and lead workshops and performances to promote and open up ideas around contemporary dance for all to enjoy.
Born in Poland and based in Co Galway since 2004, she has worked with Michael Keegan Dolan, Liz Roche, Ríonach Ní Néill (IE), Catherine Young Dance, and Compagnie Nacera Belaza, among others.
Since 2022, she has been developing her work with movement and sound in collaboration with French composer Lionel Kasparian. Their first work, A DANCE, has already been shown in multiple festivals across Ireland and abroad.
Pavithra Kannan
Artist in Residence 2022 in partnership with Create and Creative Places Tuam.
Pavithra Kannan is a Socially Engaged Artist from India, settled in Tuam, Co Galway, whose work seeks a narrative in relation to place.
In her most recent project A Sip and Beyond, Pavithra brings her personal experience of a place and the memories behind it into practice. Through A Sip and Beyond and socially engaged practice, Pavithra intends to address specific environmental, social, aesthetic and economic concerns within a located context involving the aspects of space and place.
REWIND<>RECORD (RFR)
Artists in Residence 2022
The REWIND<<FASTFORWARD>>RECORD (RFR – Han Tiernan, Brendan Fox, Sarah Edmundson), is an initiative is aimed at engaging with LGBTQ+ community groups to uncover queer histories and expand their retelling and relevance through a series of talks, tours, workshops and personal accounts.
As part of their residency in Galway Arts Centre Rewind Fastforward Record brough the Irish Names Quilt (1989) to the centre to be exhibited alongside the Array Collective ‘Druthaibs’ Ball” exhibition. They also developed a series of talks, workshops and events that explored queer histories in Galway, such as the development of Galway pride with activists Nuala Ward and the Irish names quilt with academic Padraic Kerrigan, Activist Liz Martin and Kate Drinane.
Eireann and I
Artists in Residence 2022
Beulah Ezeugo and Joselle Ntumba working as the collective Éireann and I, are a collaborative project that sources, contextualizes, and chronicles the experience of Black migrants in Ireland.
Beulah Ezeugo is an Igbo artist, curator, and researcher currently based in Glasgow. Her work centres Black postcolonial dreaming using collective memory and myth. Her practice is informed by a social science background from University College Dublin and an MLitt in Curatorial Practice from Glasgow School of Art and the University of Glasgow.
Joselle Ntumba is a cultural producer of Congolese-heritage and who was raised in Galway City. Her work centers both community and memory work. Alongside this she has a background in social science from Trinity College Dublin.
During their residency in Galway Arts Centre Beulah Ezeugo and Joselle Ntumba working as Éireann and I, developed a series of community recording events documenting intergenerational Black migrant experience in Galway. The resulting work will be developed into a series of transmissions and events alongside an exhibition in the Galway Arts Centre.
About their Galway Arts Centre residency Beulah Ezeugo and Joselle Ntumba said “we are excited to have a space where the archive can grow and take on whatever form it needs to – particularly in Galway where there is such a vibrant black community with stories to share.”
