Cygnus Cygnus

Lara Quinn

Engage Art Studios, ChurchFields, LOWER SALTHILL

Dates: 31st October - November 21st
Opening reception: October 30th 6pm
Artist talk: October 31st 3pm

Opening hours: Thursday - Saturday 12-5pm , or by appointment.

Engage is pleased to present Cygnus Cygnus, an exhibition of new work by artist Lara Quinn. The exhibition emerges from Engage's ongoing partnership with Sample Studios in Cork City. Both organisations wanted to create exhibition opportunities for their respective members outside of their own counties, allowing them to expand their artistic and professional networks. Lara will present this exhibition here in Galway, while an Engage artist will exhibit in the Lord Mayor's Pavillion in Cork this December.

Cygnus Cygnus presents a new body of work by visual artist, Lara Quinn. Drawing on traditions of figurative oil painting alongside an increasing engagement in abstraction, Quinn combines carefully observed representations of form with the playful imaginings of formative image-making. The paintings produced take their colour and shape from the past, referencing personal, family photographs as well as seminal, historic artworks. Across these approaches, Quinn is processing the ways in which the past continues to persist into the present, negotiating the tension between what is remembered, lived and imagined.

This engagement with the past considers the continuities between those who made images before her, particularly the legacies of women artists, and her own instinct to make them now. Returning to the first impulse to draw or paint, Quinn reimagines the making of lost childhood drawings, while examining some of history’s earliest representations of the self in art. Quinn’s own use of the self-portrait becomes a means of locating herself within this context, as a part of an ongoing attempt to understand what it means to inherit and continue a history of image-making today. Alongside the self-portrait, the wild swan emerges as a recurring motif throughout the paintings. In visual dialogue with the circular forms of Quinn’s abstract paintings, the bird’s cycles of migration and moulting echo the rhythms of memory and inheritance that run throughout the work.

Bio

Quinn is a Cork-based visual artist and studio-holder at Sample Studios. With prior education studying the History of Art at University College Cork, Quinn holds a BA First-Class Honours Degree in Fine Art from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design (2024).

Through painting and performance, Quinn examines personal and inherited histories of image-making, negotiating the boundaries between what is remembered, lived and imagined. The self-portrait serves as a site of enquiry throughout, anchoring the work alongside an increasing engagement with abstraction and colour. Quinn's recent awards include the Cork County Council / Uillinn Residency Award (2026), Cork City Council Artist Bursary (2026), Arts Council Agility Award (2025), Student of the Year Award (2024), Best Thesis Prize (2024), long-list for the RDS Visual Art Awards (2024), and a Cork City Council Purchase Prize (2024) which acquired several pieces for private collection at Cork City Hall. Past solo shows include, 'Lady Lazarus' at the Lavit Gallery and future exhibitions include the Studio 12 Gallery, Cork (2027) and The Lord Mayors Pavilion, Cork (2027). Her work has been reviewed in The Irish Arts Review, Visual Artists News-Sheet and The Irish Examiner.

www.laraquinn.ie