LONDON.- The small paintings on paper and canvas by Ciara Roche (b. 1993, Wexford, Ireland) depict unnerving, cinematic inspired scenes –seemingly ordinary interiors that portray a world held in a permanent state of suspense. Her lushly rendered paintings, made with wet and quickly applied oil paint to create a sense of luminosity and movement on the surface, capture timeless moments for the viewer to contemplate.

“One can’t but admire the generosity in her hand, the artist’s willingness in these paintings to step up to what’s before us, Roche’s courage. What I most appreciate, apart from her obvious skill as a painter, is akin to what good prose does; how she leaves room for us to go in and imagine, to use our intelligence, our own lives, to become skilled and wondrous in these unsettling spaces she has called us towards. Be complacent at your own peril, they seem to say. Watch your step. In every painting I hear, in the background, the noise of a siren or an alarm going off. Perhaps, if we stand for long enough, a black smoke will start drifting past those clear windowpanes. The sun will sink down into the sea and the sea will grow dark. Someone might fall. These paintings will stay with me for years to come …” Claire Keegan, 2025

Ciara Roche received her MA Art Research and Collaboration (2019) and a BA in Visual Arts Practice (2015) from the Institute of Art Design and Technology/IADT. Roche is a recipient of the 2022 Next Generation Award, numerous Arts Council & Art Links Bursaries and won the Éigse Graduate Prize for outstanding work in VISUAL with Carlow Arts Festival in 2020. She has had solo exhibitions at the Ashford Gallery, RHA (2022); Mother’s Tankstation, Dublin (2021); The LAB, Dublin (2019); and St Carthage Hall, Lismore Castle Arts, Waterford (2016). A major exhibition of her work was held in 2024 at the Butler Gallery, the leading contemporary art gallery and museum in Kilkenny, Ireland.