Cork Arts Society Student of the Year exhibition sponsored by Baker Tilly Accountants, Cork 

Lavit Gallery is delighted to present Danny Foley as the sole recipient of the 2025 Cork Arts Society Student of the Year Award sponsored by Baker Tilly Accountants, Cork. This is an annual award given to one or more graduates of MTU Crawford College of Art & Design. In addition to an exhibition at Lavit Gallery the artist receives a cash prize of €1000 kindly sponsored by Baker Tilly Accountants, Cork.  

The Student of the Year Award was initiated in 1967 by Cork Arts Society, now trading as Lavit Gallery, with sculptor John Burke as the first recipient and subsequent awardees including Maud Cotter, Eilis O’Connell and Vivienne Roche. Initially the award was solely a cash prize but it later evolved to include an exhibition once a gallery had been established. More recent recipients of the award include Helen Cantwell & Bernie Hennessy, Stephen Doyle, Orlagh O’Byrne & Padraic Barrett, Deirdre Frost, Andrea Newman and Lara Quinn.  

Beyond Eye Sea presents a new body of work by artist Danny Foley for his first solo show at Cork’s Lavit Gallery. This exhibition continues Foley’s exploration of the role of the shapeshifter as both a concept and creative strategy. Through this new work, Foley interprets concerns around marine biodiversity through a personal, mythic, and ecological lens. In Foley’s practice, shapeshifting is considered an active and playful process of making art—one in which the edges of the self-dissolve and the human is reimagined as part something else. Washes of watercolour and ink pool across paper, forming ambiguous, shifting semblances. This approach expands as Foley reshapes these works into collaged cut-outs that extend across the gallery walls. As the material unfurls through the space, collaged forms lead toward a stop-motion animation, where a lone, shadowy figure traverses a series of transformations, propelling the ever-changing entity forward. What remains are traces—residues left at the end of each sequence. Together, these works culminate in an immersive installation: an ecosystem of forms, each distinct yet interconnected. Just as the removal of a single entity can ripple and reshape complex systems of life, Beyond Eye Sea embraces multiplicity, transformation, and the in-between spaces of being in a shared world. Foley’s work asks: what possibilities emerge when we look beyond what is seen and recognise within ourselves the many and diverse others that make us human? 

Danny Foley is an Irish artist currently based in Backwater Artists Group Studios in Cork City. Foley recently graduated from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design with a First-Class Honours Degree in Fine Art. In addition to receiving the Student of the Year Award from Lavit Gallery, Foley has also received awards including the Backwater Artists Group Moving Image Residency, the Thesis Award and Sample Studios Network Award. His work has been purchased by Cork City Council, Cork County Council, Eli Lilly, and the MTU Arts Office. Recent exhibitions include GOMA Graduate Exhibition (Waterford, 2026), EARTH (James Barry Exhibition Centre, 2025), SPECIES (MTU Gallery at 46 Grand Parade, Cork, and Pallas University of Applied Sciences, Tartu, 2025), The Tale of the Norway Spruce and the Bark Beetle (1111 Gallery, Budapest, 2024), and TWISTER (MAMŰ Galéria, Budapest, 2024). Foley looks forward to another upcoming solo exhibition in Studio 12 (Backwater Artists Group, August 2026). 

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