Deirdre O’Mahony (B: 1956) lives and works in Ireland. She studied at St Martins School of Art, London, Crawford College, Cork, completing a practice-based PhD at the University of Brighton in 2012. She has an impressive 30 year track record in making work across sculpture, painting, installation and participatory projects. At the centre of this work is her interest in the politics of landscape, rural/urban relationships, rural sustainability and food security.
Her sound and moving image project, The Quickening, was commissioned and presented in a ground-breaking exhibition at The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art, Dublin in 2024 and simultaneously screened in rural farms, halls and barns across the South-East of Ireland. The Model Plot, a collaborative planting with the Irish Loy Association, was recently acquired by the Irish Museum of Modern Art for the National State Collection and exhibited as part of the IMMA Collection: Art as Agency (2025).
In 2026, The Quickening was exhibited in the 25th Sydney Biennale, curator Hoor Al Qasimi and the Medina Triennial, New York State, curators Kari Conte and Karin Lansoo. It has been translated into seven languages and exhibited in museums and contemporary art galleries across Europe including Ujazdowski CCA in Warsaw, Poland and PLATO Gallery Contemporary Art, Czech Republic (2026).
Other recent solo exhibitions include #5: a (sort of) retrospective… curated Sebastian Cichocki for 17(Joy), Lombardi—Kargl, Vienna with an accompanying text, Land Art as Useful Art: Sebastian Cichocki in Conversation with Deirdre O’Mahony, (Part 1 & 2) published by L’internationale (2026), Between a Rock and a Hard Place VISUAL, Carlow (2025); FARMWORK Void Arts Centre, Derry (2025) and Botanicals Vision Art Platform, London and Istanbul (2026).
Awards include Arts Council of Ireland Project and Bursary awards, the O’Malley Irish American Cultural Institute Award (2018) and Pollock-Krasner Fellowship (1995). Her work is in the National Collection of the Arts Council of Ireland and the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
Download CV
Artist Statement HERE