Abbey Road Artists’ Studios Current Residents | Artists’ Studios | Athlone Arts and Tourism

STUDIO 1 – Aoife Doolan

Aoife Doolan, is a multidisciplinary, community based artist, musician and painter, currently residing and working in Westmeath. In 2008 she graduated from Dublin Institute of Technology with a B.A in Fine Art and further completed an M.A in Film Studies and Screen Culture at University College Dublin in 2010. In 2008, she was selected by the Royal Hibernian Academy for their Emerging Artist Graduate exhibition for her work titled Flightless, which also went on to gain recognition with Filmbase and Underground Cinema in Dublin. She had exhibited work in various locations across Ireland, including Athlone’s Luan Gallery, and her work was selected for inclusion in the 2020 HerStory light show exhibition, projected on the GPO in Dublin city.

Over the past fifteen years Aoife has developed both a personal practice as a solo artist, and a practice as a community artist, with a specific focus on community inclusion and regeneration. She has co-founded three community artist collectives over that time including the Making Space collective, Athlone and the Pulse collective in Bantry, Co.Cork where she lived and worked as a community artist for over a decade. She has exhibited her work across the country, including Athlone’s Luan Gallery (Boardwalk Gallery) alongside the Louis Le Broqucy exhibition, An Tain.

Aoife is currently working under the Athlone Family Resource Centre as the Community Arts Inclusion worker, with a residency at Abbey Road Studios in collaboration with Athlone Arts and Tourism.

STUDIO 2 – Niamh Butler

Niamh Butler (b. 1988, Ballinasloe, Ireland) is an Irish multidisciplinary designer & artist based in Athlone. After graduating from the University of Plymouth with a Masters in Architecture she designed beautiful award-winning family homes with Brennan Furlong Architects in Dublin. Niamh has worked on the tangible alongside the intangible: clothes, rugs, interior spaces, buildings, homes, edible gardens, social constructs such as land ownership and planning laws. Her goal is always to bring more beauty, order and harmony into the world through the design and making of clothes, textiles, homes and habitats.

She is currently naturally dyeing onto reclaimed and locally abundant cotton, linen and wool with slow processes that are nurturing to people and our water ecology.

STUDIO 3 – Paul Flaherty

Paul Flaherty is an emerging Irish visual artist, primarily working in painting and drawing. Born in Dublin in 1996, he began his third level education studying engineering technology in AIT Co. Westmeath and continued this interest of technology when he transferred his direction to the Fine Art program at IT Sligo where he graduated in 2021.

Paul’s artistic concerns are to do with the overlap of technology and humanity and the dichotomy of the digital era. Through paintings and drawings the artist explores the idea of digital dualism and living different experiences between physical and digital spaces. As experiences are being translated to the digital space, themes of loneliness and isolation surround the artwork.

STUDIO 4 – Amanda Ralph

Amanda Ralph (b. 1966, Athlone, Ireland) graduated with a Fine Art degree from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin (1990), and an MFA from the University of Arizona on a Fulbright Scholarship (1995). Her first solo exhibition, Coroner Regrets, was held at Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin (1999), and toured to the Orchard Gallery Derry, 2000 and the Irish Arts Centre, New York in 2002.

Ralph has completed public art commissions, with work permanently sited at Lough Boora Sculpture Park, and has participated in residencies in the Netherlands, France, and New York, representing Ireland in PS1 MoMA’s International Residency Programme. Her work is supported by The Arts Council of Ireland, Dublin City Council, Culture Ireland, and Westmeath County Council.