Danny Foley: Rising star of the Cork art world
Danny Foley's exhibition is currently on at the Lavit in Cork.
Few opportunities are as meaningful for emerging artists as the Cork Arts Society Student of the Year Award, which has been presented to a graduate of the Crawford College of Art & Design each year since 1967.
The award includes a cash prize of €1,000 and a solo exhibition at the Lavit Gallery on Wandesford Quay, and generally serves as a springboard for long-term professional careers.
In 2025, the recipient was Danny Foley, a young Cork artist whose exhibition Beyond Eye Sea has just opened at the Lavit and will run until March 24.
Foley mostly works in drawing, painting and animation, and Beyond Eye Sea picks up on the themes of his degree show, which explored the role of the shapeshifter, most memorably in In Two Places, a short film of the artist dancing with his own shadow as a child.
The new exhibition takes the form of an immersive installation, featuring a new stop motion film, four paintings and a series of collaged drawings.
“The show is the culmination of the work I’ve been making since October,” says Foley.
“When I looked at the exhibition space in the Lavit, I thought the long walls would be perfect for these collages I’ve been working on, re-cycling paper from past drawings. There’s one that unfurls across the long wall as you enter the gallery, and another on the back wall.
"Then there’s the stop motion film, and the paintings I produced as I was making it.”
The new film, which lends the exhibition its title, features a lone, shadowy figure undergoing a series of transformations over the course of its 3.44 minute duration.
“There was no storyboard or clear expectation for how the animation would unfold as I was making it,” says Foley. “It was more the result of allowing the material to flow freely.
"I used a technique of layering water-based materials like watercolour and ink on the same surface for each scene, and then took hundreds or thousands of photographs of the painting changing to create the impression of movement. The film continues my exploration of what shapeshifting means for me in terms of my artistic processes.”
Foley says of shape-shifting that “it’s not just a subject matter in my work, it also describes the way in which I approach artmaking. I never have a fixed idea of what I’m about to do, it’s always subject to change.
"It’s almost as if the work itself is a kind of entity that I need to negotiate with. I don’t necessarily know what it’s going to turn into, hence the title of the show, Beyond Eye See.”
Foley produced the work for his exhibition next door to the Lavit, at the Backwater Artists complex, where he won a six-month student residency – again for his degree show – that has now been extended until August.
“I’m still buddies with a lot of people I was in college with,” he says. “A lot of them are still around Cork, and I share a studio space with three of them, in the attic at Backwater, so it still feels like a group studio environment. Maintaining a sense of community is really important, I think.”
Foley has always been surrounded by art and artists. His parents are Colette Nolan and Billy Foley, both established figures on the Cork arts scene.
“They were part of Cork Artists Collective, and had studios next to St Fin Barre's Cathedral when I was growing up. It was a very ordinary thing for me.
"When I was a kid, I thought everyone's parents had artist studios. But I didn't like going to exhibitions at all, my parents had to drag me.”
He always drew. “And then, when I was 11 or 12, we went on a holiday to Venice. My parents bought me a Chinese ink kit, with a block of ink, and I started drawing with that in my sketchbook.
"I think I came back from that holiday knowing that art was what I wanted to do.
"I wasn't ever really good at anything else, to be honest. I'm very dyslexic, and I struggled in other areas at school, but art was always something that I got validation from.”
While many students complete a PLC foundation course before going on to college, Foley was confident enough in his abilities that he went straight into the Crawford from school. “I loved every minute at art college,” he says. “I had the best time.”
Beyond Eye See is Foley’s first solo exhibition, “but I’ve been in group shows over the past year, at the James Barry Gallery at MTU, GOMA at Waterford, and Superprojects in Dublin.
"So I’ve kept busy. I have another solo exhibition coming up at the Studio 12 Gallery at Backwater in August.”
He has a part-time job as a guide at the Glucksman Gallery, but continues to spend most of his time at his studio. “I’m in there every day,” he says, “before work or after work, whenever I get the chance.
"I just want to keep the momentum going. While I was at Crawford, I went to Turkey on the Erasmus programme, and I really enjoyed being in another country, studying art. If I was to go on and do a Masters, it would probably be somewhere abroad.
"But for now, I just want to keep playing with my work, without the pressure of having to write a big thesis.”
Foley admits to having few interests outside the art world. “Maybe after this show, I’ll try and find something,” he chuckles.
“But I do really enjoy reading about eco-philosophy, and last year, after I finished college, I spent a few weeks walking the coastal route from Porto to Santiago on the Camino. I really like my time in nature. I might go back to that again.”
- Danny Foley, Beyond Eye Sea continues at the Lavit Gallery until March 21. The artist is in conversation with Dr Sarah Kelleher at 12pm, March 14.
- Further information: lavitgallery.com and danny-foley.com
