Summer 2025 at the Bourn Vincent Gallery
Constant Quest: Life and Selected Works of Helen Hooker O'Malley Roelofs
This summer, the Bourn Vincent Gallery at the University of Limerick will present Constant Quest: Life and Selected Works of Helen Hooker O'Malley Roelofs—a landmark exhibition and publication celebrating the remarkable legacy and creative spirit of Helen Hooker O'Malley.
The exhibition features a series of sculpted busts of notable Irish figures including Paddy Moloney, Liam Redmond, Mary Lavin, Maud Gonne MacBride, and Samuel Beckett. Alongside these are selections of Helen’s striking photography, drawn from the collections of Photo Museum Ireland and the University of Limerick.
Vitrines throughout the gallery will display examples of her photographic equipment and offer insight into her wide-ranging pursuits, which extended to painting, design, and textiles. Together, these elements offer a rich and multifaceted portrait of a pioneering artist whose life was defined by curiosity, experimentation, and a deep commitment to creative expression.
Na Cailleacha’s The School of Hibernia, After Raphael, is on display at the Bourn Vincent Gallery, Foundation Building. The exhibition features the Tableau staged at the Museum Building at Trinity College Dublin, as well as descriptor panels on the School of Athens which formed the inspiration for this work.
As part of an ongoing aim to increase visibility for women artists and to challenge patriarchy, the piece is recreated with a number of key women leaders in Ireland to reflect a more inclusive world view. It draws on traditions, lessons, education, medicine, engineering, law, history, the arts, social activism and sport - expanding on the earlier Raphael fresco in a contemporary way.
University of Limerick proudly presents 'The Divine Comedy' by Samuel Walsh, an awe-inspiring collection inspired by Dante Alighieri's eternal masterpiece.
Samuel Walsh is a leading figure in Irish abstract art. Born in Wimbledon, London in England in 1951 to Irish parents (his mother is from Limerick and his father is from Ennis), Samuel Walsh was educated in London and in Limerick where he attended Villiers Secondary School. He lived in Limerick from 1968 to 1990 and currently lives and works in Co Clare.
Walsh studied art at the Limerick School of Art and Philosophy at Mary Immaculate College of Education, Limerick. He took his MFA at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin.
In a remarkable gesture of generosity, Walsh has donated this significant body of work to the University of Limerick's Art Collections.
The Night Climate
The Night Climate by Pamela Dunne opened on Thursday, March 14th, 2024. Pamela’s work is an ongoing search for remnants in her external and internal environments.
Taking her first cues from the new challenges of motherhood, Pamela quickly realised the importance of the night climate. The slowed down pace of settling. The thoughts that were hers again to pick up the remnants of the day. The freedoms that the night presented led Pamela to first to gaze internally, to attempt to re-find herself, to gather the newest parts of herself and endeavour to combine them with the more familiar segments. This led Pamela to inevitably look to her external surroundings, her local landscape of the Shannon estuary for reference points, placement and belonging.
She began her search for the remains of the day. Through lens, process, gathering and making Pamela brings these objects, thoughts, notes, jobs, feelings to the foreground of the night landscape.
Crystallised Chaos
Chaos Criostalaithe, 15 Nollaig – 1 Márta 2023 taispeántas de shaothair meán measctha
Gailearaí Bourn Vincent, Áras na Fhondúireacht, UL
Crystallised Chaos, 15 December – 1 March 2024 an exhibition of mixed media works
Bourn Vincent Gallery, Foundation Building, UL