Galway artists receive €310,000 funding boost — ‘The Arts Council is supporting a question, not a finished object’
Sixteen Galway artists have been awarded bursaries to support their work in music, dance, literature and the visual arts.
Nearly €310,000 was allocated to Galway artists from the Arts Council’s latest bursary award scheme, which distributed €4.3 million nationwide. Successful applicants received up to €20,000 each to support the next stage of their creative development.
While recipients are pursuing projects in music, dance, literature and the visual arts, one theme emerged repeatedly when speaking to the Irish Independent: the freedom that comes with having time to develop ideas without immediate pressure to produce results.
“The Arts Council is supporting a question, not a finished object,” recipient and visual artist Samir Mahmood said.
Ongoing exhibition States, Stations at the Luan Gallery Athlone. © Luan Gallery
Drawing inspiration from his homeland of Pakistan, Mr Mahmood will explore the South Asian Sufi shrine as a sensory experience. This December he will undertake interviews and field observations before beginning studio work in early 2027.
“At first, I felt relief more than celebration. A bursary like this gives an artist something very rare: time. It allows me to spend the next year reading, travelling, and experimenting in the studio, without the pressure to produce something for exhibition at the end of every week.”
Digital photo-collage, painting, objects, and video artitst
As part of the project, he will receive mentorship from artist Alice Rekab and continue exhibiting work in the studio.
“I will make large-scale scrolls that extend Indo-Persian miniature painting into formats that people can move through, not just stand in front of. Sound will be treated as a structural element, not only as an accompaniment,” Mr Mahmood said.
“I want to be clear about my intention. I am not recreating ritual, and I do not believe that an artwork can do what a shrine does for the people who visit it. I am focusing on the part of the sensory logic that can be brought into a gallery, and I allow the rest to be felt as absence.
“I trained and worked as a doctor before becoming an artist, and I have always kept the question that comes from that experience: what do things actually do to bodies? This is what I ask of an artwork. I am interested not only in what it shows, but in what happens to the person standing in front of it,” he added.
“Shrines are built on the idea that an environment can change a person’s state. This is a serious idea, and I believe contemporary art can explore it. The next year will be a test of this possibility.”
Samir’s previous work at an exhibitoin in Athlone.
Romanian-Irish cellist Adrian Mantu, internationally recognised for his orchestral work, will use the bursary to focus on mentorship and refining his understanding of traditional music.
“The core aim is to deepen my stylistic, technical and interpretative understanding of traditional music on the cello through sustained engagement with repertoire and direct learning from practitioners who carry and transmit the tradition.”
The project will involve studying traditional repertoire through close listening, transcription and performance practice.
“This includes traditional repertoire which focuses on ‘absorbing stylistic language through close listening, transcription and embodied practice, allowing traditional phrasing, rhythm, ornamentation, bowing approaches and ensemble interaction to inform both interpretation and creative response’.
“This reflective approach supports deeper learning and ensures that new material developed during this period emerges organically from an understanding of the tradition rather than from external stylistic influence.”
After more than two decades as a performer and educator, Mr Mantu sees the period as an opportunity to consolidate a lifetime of experience and shape the next phase of his career.
Also using the bursary to develop her practice is vocalist and early Italian music specialist Aisling Kenny.
With a particular affinity for stringed instruments, Ms Kenny views music as an embodied practice that requires time and space away from the demands of earning a living through performance work.
“I started off in church choir, so I have a great affinity for sacred music, but you often find that the music, when you hear it, the lines are so blurred and sacred and secular, you know, so it can be very kind of intimate, very sensual, very emotive and very moving.”
While she teaches a small number of students interested in her specialist field, she is looking forward to dedicating more time to developing her own artistic work.
Ms Kenny said that when working on “someone else’s artistic vision”, it can be easy to “neglect your own practice”.
Her plans for the coming year centre on three areas: technical development, mentorship and career progression.
“I’m relatively at the beginning of developing my own autonomous artistic practice and I find it needs time and space, so if you’re off saying yes to every single project you’re asked for. Maybe some that musically don’t reward you. It’s a balance - you need to pay your bills, you need to live, but funding applications do take a huge amount of time, so it’s a challenge to maintain it.
“I suppose it’s well worth going for if you believe in your practice.
“I think working through music is a way for audiences and singers [to process] the world around us and making sense of it all. At the same time, music has a mysterious quality that brings us closer to something, we could call it God, universe, something bigger than us.
“I find really rewarding part of and a really interesting and a kind of incentive to keep going with the music.”
“You just discover so much about humanity and yourself.”
Ms Kenny will hold an exhibition concert in St Augustine’s Church on September 12.
“You know it’s kind of a cliché that the music will be calming and meditative and mindful, that’s one part of it, but I want them to come in and just have the space to let their imagination be free and relate to their own lives.”
Applications for arts funding and bursaries regularly attract significant interest. While artists are grateful for the support they receive, many say the process can be demanding and expectations are not always met.
“The effort that goes into these applications for individual artists is substantial, but it is not visible. A competitive application like this takes weeks,” Mr Mahmood told the Irish Independent, identifying areas where the funding landscape could be improved.
“However, two things follow from this. The first is that the burden is not equal for everyone. Writing a competitive application is a skill that must be learned. Artists who do not have institutional education, who do not have English as a first language, or who do not have colleagues to read a draft are at a disadvantage that is not related to the quality of their work.
“The second point is that competitive rounds cannot be the only structure. They are designed to be episodic. You receive funding for a project, not for your ongoing practice. Measures that give artists a basic level of support, so that the time between awards is manageable, provide something that a bursary alone cannot.
“Both types of support are necessary.”
Ms Kenny said there is a type of “grit and resilience” among artists who continue applying for funding, adding that “what is for you will not pass you”.
There were 16 recipients in total from Galway. They are: Fionnuala Doyle Wade (Dance), Pádraig Ó Cíobháin (Literature Irish), Darach Ó Scolaí (Literature Irish), Aisling Kenny (Music), Peadar-Tom Mercier (Music), Lugh O’Neill (Music), Niamh Regan (Music), Barry Kerr (Traditional Arts), Adrian Mantu (Traditional Arts), Iarlaith Bermingham (Visual Arts), Kevin Brennan (Visual Arts), Miriam de Búrca (Visual Arts), Tom Flanagan (Visual Arts), Marielle MacLeman (Visual Arts), Samir Mahmood (Visual Arts), Katherine Waugh (Visual Arts).