Mason Hayes & Curran LLP is delighted to support the 2021 RDS Visual Art Awards, one of the most important platforms for visual art graduates in Ireland with a prize fund of €32,500. Now in its fifth year, the RDS Mason Hayes & Curran LLP Centre Culturel Irlandais Residency Award gives the winner full-time access to a room and studio space for 3 months in the Centre Culturel Irlandais in the heart of Paris.

Commenting on the firm's support of the award, Christine O'Donovan, Chair, Mason Hayes & Curran LLP, said "Mason Hayes & Curran LLP is very pleased to continue our support in 2021 for the RDS Visual Art Awards for graduating students from Irish art colleges. We primarily support artists based in Ireland, through commissions, hosting exhibitions and purchasing work for our collection and we are the proud custodians of one of the most important private corporate collections of contemporary art. The RDS Mason Hayes & Curran LLP Centre Culturel Irlandais Residency Award provides the winner with a wonderful opportunity to further their professional development and we hope this award will act as a springboard for an emerging artist at the early formative stage in their career.”

The winners of the 2021 awards have now been announced, full details are below. We are particularly pleased to annnounce the winner of the RDS Mason Hayes & Curran LLP Centre Culturel Irlandais Residency Award, Vanessa Jones. Vanessa graduated from the National College of Art & Design this year with a first-class honours Master of Fine Art degree. She is a figurative painter whose practice explores feminine themes using self-portraiture. Working representationally in oils using traditional techniques, she employs the history of Western painting alongside medieval and primordial symbolic associations to engage the viewer with the concepts of myth, beauty, replication and duality as they relate to the feminine archetype. Her personas inhabit familiar yet unknown landscapes that are embedded in cultural symbolism, and her self-portraits conflate Western and Eastern cultures to reflect her own Western identity integrated with a rich Eastern family heritage.

RDS Taylor Art Award €10,000 - Finn Nichol, Limerick School of Art & Design

R.C. Lewis-Crosby Award €5,000 - Vanessa Jones, NCAD

RDS Members' Art Fund Award €5,000 - Karolina Adamczak, IADT

RHA Graduate Studio Award €7,500 - Lauren Conway, IADT

RDS Mason Hayes & Curran LLP Centre Culturel Irlandais Residency Award (value €6,000) - Vanessa Jones, NCAD

More information can be found here.