18: PeripheriesOPEN 2026

This year, Gorey School of Art, through the Periphery Space visual art programme, supported by Wexford Arts Office, is inviting artists to submit an application to take part in a correspondence course, what we call “mentoring sessions”, whereby artists will contribute to and develop work through sessions with mentoring artists and fellow peers. At the end of the process—three meetings at Gorey School of Art in April/May/June—this will feed into an exhibition scheduled at the end of July, titled 18.

In this sense, the mentoring programme becomes a space in which artists develop work that has the exhibition as its outcome.

We are looking for artists who are especially interested in developing their work towards exhibition, and in exploring how far they can push the limits of their practice through processes that are not already established within it. This is a space for experimentation, development, and possibility in terms of medium, approach, and criticality.

Artists will also be working within a collective mindset, as a maximum of 18 artists—hense the exhibition name—will be selected for the mentoring sessions, with the resulting work exhibited at Periphery Space Gallery in late July, early August.

“18 and life to go”, as the Skid Row lyric portends, marks the threshold when life and responsibility under the vigil of the Law begins. And yet, as artists, we establish our own thresholds and Laws in our work as we enter adulthood, what is called maturity and style in the artist’s trajectory of becoming an artist.

Please send 100 words outlining why you want to participate in the programme and what you want to develop through it, along with five images of your work. These images should present both work you have already made and possible directions your practice might move toward in terms of medium, approach, and criticality, which the mentoring sessions and exhibition process may help to develop.

Suitable for artists across all disciplines.

Image: Brid Higgins Ni Cheide, Target Practice, 50x70cm, oil on panel. Exhibited as part of the last peripheriesOPEN held in 2019.

Meet your artist-mentors

Emma Roche lives and works in Wexford. Emma is a painter whose works are driven by everyday disruptions such as waged work and parenting responsibilities. The paintings are part of a long process, which starts with creating long lines of acrylic paint extruded through a syringe and laid out to dry. Once the paint has dried, it is used as if it is wool or thread and the strands are knitted together, with knitting needles, to make the final painting. Preliminary drawings on graph paper are used as patterns/craft charts to work from - each square represents a stitch to build the image. The layered process corresponds to a humdrum of daily repetitiveness and physically records and stores time. She was an Artist in Residence at the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation, New York, 2023 and was awarded the inaugural Lady Grantchester Prize as part of the John Moore’s Painting Prize, Liverpool, 2023. She received the EMERGENCE Award from Wexford Arts Centre, 2021-2023. Her work is in private and public collections, and she is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, 2024 and Culture Ireland, 2025. The artist is represented by Brigitte Mulholland, Paris.

Damien Flood b. 1979, is an Irish artist based in Dublin.

His work is grounded in early writings on philosophy, theology, alchemy and the natural sciences and explores the mutability of 'reality' and language.

Solo shows include: Eternal Garden, Solo Presentation at Art Brussels with Green On Red Gallery, Dublin, As Above, So Below, Green On Red Gallery, Dublin, Both 2025, A Place for Lost Things, Weber & Weber, Turin, 2023, Dig, Green On Red Gallery, Dublin 2022, Tilt, RHA Gallery, Dublin, 2021, Shape of Things, Diane Rosenstein Gallery, LA, 2019, The Figure in the Carpet, Green On Red Gallery, Dublin, 2018, Theory of Two Centres, Stephane Simoens, Knokke, 2017, Infinite Plane, Grey Noise, Dubai, 2015, Interior Sun, Green On Red Gallery, 2014, Theatre of the World, Ormston House, Limerick, 2012, History of the Visitation, Green On Red Gallery, 2011, Counter-Earth, Green On Red Gallery, 2010.

Recent group shows include: Earthly Delights, Green On Red Gallery, Dublin, 2025, Liminal Salon, Liminal Gallery, Margate, 2025, 2024, 2023, Tenderness, Liminal Gallery, Margate 2023, Damien Flood, Niamh McCann, Courthouse Gallery, Clare, 2021, DF/HW, Thomas Rehbein Gallery, Cologne, 2018, Known Unknowns, Limerick City Gallery, Wouldn’t it be nice if we could dream together? Diane Rosenstein Gallery, LA (both 2017), The Studio Chronicles at RH Contemporary, New York (2015), Product Recall, Galway Arts Centre, Galway (2015), NGORONGORO, Lehder Strasse 34, Berlin (2015), Cú Chulainn Comforted, Basic Space, Dublin (2015), Promise of Palm Trees, Breese Little, London, (2015), Pull Bite Rally, NCAD Gallery, Dublin (2014). Renew, Green On Red Gallery, Dublin (2014,) Was Uns Trend, Glue, Berlin (2014). In 2013, he exhibited in the group exhibition Island: New Art From Ireland in Galleria Civica diModena, Italy; in the three-person show Flood/NiBhriain/Vari at DOMOBAAL, London; and the group show Cafe Paradiso (Least common denominator, or Rustenschacher) at M1, Hohenlockstedt, Germany. In 2012, he was part of the group show Making Familiar at Temple Bar Gallery, Crystalline at Millennium Court Arts Centre and Last at Douglas Hyde Gallery.

James Merrigan is an artist and critic. For 15 years he has invented online and printed identities for his writing and publications, from +billion-journal (2010-17) to Small Night (2019—). In 2011 he was awarded the inaugural Critical Writing Award by Visual Artists Ireland and The LAB Dublin. As co-curator of Gorey School of Art’s Periphery Space for 8 years he has worked alongside Emma Roche to develop exhibitions such as “Soul–Beating” (2017) and “peripheriesPOST” (2023). Recent exhibitions and publications include WEAREFETISHISTS (Garter Lane Arts Centre, 2023), and TALK (Librairie Yvon Lambert, Paris, 2024). He has been invited to write for the “Death of Painting” chapter for Routledge’s forthcoming Companion to Contemporary Painting (2026), and was selected for Houston Texas-based F Magazine’s “In Memoriam” issue, 2026. This year he will print and exhibit screen-printed projects in collaboration with artists and artist-editors under Small Night Projects at Carthage Hall Lismore and Small Night Zine at Green on Red Gallery Dublin. He teaches at Gorey School of Art and lectures in Psychoanalysis and Art at Trinity College Dublin. His writing circa 2024-26 is found exclusively on SubStack at merrigan.substack.com and Small Night projects at smallnight.org

*Other mentor to be confirmed