idir
A solo exhibition by Blaine O’Donnell
EMERGENCE Visual Art Award Winner 2024
Curated by Catherine Bowe
Wexford Arts Centre
13 June – 25 July 2026
Wexford Arts Centre and Wexford County Council Arts Department, in partnership with South East Technological University, are pleased to present idir, a solo exhibition by Blaine O’Donnell, recipient of the 2024 EMERGENCE Visual Art Award. Idir will run in Wexford Arts Centre from Saturday, 13th June to Saturday, 25th July, 2026.
Blaine O’Donnell is an artist working primarily in sculpture. Taking an experimental approach to the materials and debris of photography, architecture, and geology, he investigates the art object as a site for tracing networks of relationships between objects, humans, and places.
O’Donnell’s practice is deeply rooted in material experimentation, with material agency and chance contributing to the work’s form.
For the EMERGENCE Award, O’Donnell has drawn upon geological sites in County Wexford and the architecture of the Wexford Arts Centre building. He has developed a new body of sculptural work incorporating moving image elements, to explore questions of temporality, repetition and translation.
Using the interplay between sculptural forms, contrasting materials and architectural context, O’Donnell stages unfamiliar encounters to explore ontological associations between disparate things, frequently returning to the fundamental question of when something becomes something else.
In 2024, Blaine O’Donnell won the EMERGENCE Visual Artist Award, a partnership initiative between Wexford Arts Centre, Wexford County Council Arts Department, andSouth East Technological University. Presented biannually, the award has a monetary value of €15,000 and includes mentorship support over the award cycle to the value of €2,000 and a solo exhibition at Wexford Arts Centre. In addition, the artist has the opportunity to engage with the Arts Campus of South East Technological University.
Blaine O’Donnell was also the recipient of the Paul Robinson Studio Award, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (2025); the Arts Council of Ireland’s Visual Arts Bursary (2024) and Agility Award (2024); and the Dublin City Council Bursary Award (2024). Recent exhibitions includeTWO PHOTOGRAPHS AWAY, curated by Aisling Dunne, Ardgillan Gallery, Balbriggan, Ireland (2024); and hinder / further, curated by Mark O’Gorman, The Complex, Dublin (2022). Recent residencies include Firestation Artists’ Studios, Dublin (2024); Leitrim Sculpture Centre (2024); the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico (2024); and the TBG+S/HIAP International Residency Exchange, Finland (2023).
The EMERGENCE Visual Art Award is supported by the Arts Council.
Wexford Arts Centre is supported by the Arts Council and Wexford County Council.
For further information on artist Blaine O’Donnell, please log on to www.blaineodonnell.com. For further information on the award, please log on to www.emergenceaward.ie or email info@emergenceaward.ie.
Gallery hours at Wexford Arts Centre are Tuesday to Friday from 10am to 5pm and Saturday from 10am to 4pm. For further information on idir or artist Blaine O’Donnell, contact Catherine Bowe – Curator, Wexford Arts Centre, Cornmarket, Wexford on +353 (0)53 91 23764 or info@wexfordartscentre.ie.
