MART Gallery & Studios – Providing Creative Platforms
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The MART Awards Show 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, 31 January, 1–3pm
Exhibition Runs: 31 January – 14 February 2026
Venue: The MART Gallery, 190a Rathmines Road Lower, Dublin 6
Opening Hours: Wednesday – Saturday, 1–6pm
www.mart.ie
The MART Gallery is delighted to present The MART Awards Show 2026, our annual exhibition celebrating innovation and experimentation in contemporary visual art. This showcase highlights the work of three exceptional emerging artists selected through MART’s ongoing partnerships and award programmes that provide vital support and visibility to early-career artists.
This year’s exhibiting artists are:
Nicole Manning, recipient of the MART & Fingal Arts Office Graduate Award, who received a year-long studio residency at MART Studios with curatorial and financial support towards this exhibition.
Vicky Ochala, awarded the Fire Station Artists’ Studios Sculpture Practice Award, recognising her dynamic and experimental approach to sculptural practice.
Lily Mannion, an ATU Graduate whose work demonstrates a distinctive and ambitious emerging voice within the Irish contemporary art scene.
Through their diverse practices, the artists explore materiality, space, and form in ways that challenge and expand the possibilities of contemporary art.
Join us for the opening on Saturday 31 January, 1–3pm, to celebrate these exciting new voices in Irish art.
Vicky Ochala
Vicky Ochala is a Dublin-based artist and a recent graduate of BA in Fine Arts at TUD. She works primarily through installation, using materials and processes such as welding, casting, screen printing, and video. Her practice explores personal narratives within political histories and architectural structures. Much of Vicky’s work is inspired by her Polish heritage, drawing on stories passed down by relatives. While deeply personal, it also speaks to the shared histories and experiences of Polish and Eastern European communities affected by the Communist and Post-Communist period. www.instagram.com/vickyochala_va/
Lily Mannion
Lily Mannion is an Irish visual artist working across multiple disciplines, including ceramics, sculpture, digital and textile-based media. Her work is process-driven and materiality-centred. Currently, her work examines processes of exploitation, extraction, control, and industry, referencing various ecological and scientific phenomena to explore how they reflect broader social and political issues. Her work aims to make the relationships between things somewhat legible, locating sources of cohesion to discern and convey an order that already exists. Contact details: – www.instagram.com/lilymannionartist
Nicole Manning
Nicole Manning is a Dublin based artist working predominantly through the medium of paint. Manning is a recent graduate of NCAD (2024) in which she received her Joint Hons BA in Fine Art Painting & Education. Inspired by the mind-body connection & the interplay between the physical and psychological, her work explores the external expression of inner turmoil within the human experience. Rooted in her experience of living with chronic stomach pain, Manning’s recent work focuses on how trauma manifests within the body. Using gestural, twisting, brushwork to mirror the visual of the intestines, she explores how symbolic & archetypal imagery can narrate the complex experience of living with an invisible illness. Victorian bed frames, curled bodies & animals act as metaphor & alter-ego within her paintings. Her work aims to translate internal pain into visible form.” www.nicolemanning.art | www.instagram.com/nicolemannning/
