Artist Mentoring Sessions

This year we are seeking applications from practitioners in any area of practice (painting, sculpture, performance, moving image, expanded practice etc.) that wish to engage in the critical development of their practice.

Selected artists will participate in three in-person critiques held at GSA and receive two recorded video feedbacks between August and November 2025.

Led by artist and art critic, James Merrigan, alongside a guest artist each session, this is a free opportunity to discuss depths of your art and art-making in a group setting of your peers.

Please upload 1 image that defines your art practice and no more than 100 words that explains the reasons why this workshop is pivotal to your art practice at this place and time.

Focus Areas:

– Presentation skills

– Critical and analytical thinking

– Networking and collaboration

– Artistic development and idea generation

Suitable for artists across all disciplines.

Meet your tutors

Mark Swords is an artist who lives with his family in County Wicklow, Ireland. Swords has exhibited his work widely, both nationally and internationally and is represented in numerous collections. His recent exhibitions include "I must walk towards Oregon", Kevin Kavanagh (2023), Tribuna, 2022 at The Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts, Dublin, Portico, 2021, with Tanad Aaron at The Complex, Dublin and TAUCHGANG, 2019, a group exhibition at Galerie Christian Lethert, Cologne. He is represented by Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin.

Ciara Roche is a painter based in Ireland. She makes hundreds of small paintings on paper and some larger paintings on canvas. Her paintings are restless and full of detail, they are an exploration of light and colour, they can be uncanny, they can be off kilter. They are full of tension – between reality & fiction and between desire & disgust. She is recipient of the 2022 Next Generation Award, numerous Arts Council & ArtLinks Bursaries and won the Éigse Graduate Prize for outstanding work in VISUAL with Carlow Arts Festival in 2020.

Emma Roche lives and works in Wexford. 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. Upcoming shows include a group presentation at Felix, LA and a solo booth at ARCO, Madrid, 2025. The artist is represented by Brigitte Mulholland, Paris.

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 Projects (2019-2025). 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). James has been awarded several Arts Council Bursary and Project Awards. He teaches at Gorey School of Art and lectures in Psychoanalysis and Art at Trinity College Dublin. fireartsale.org