BIO

Danny Foley is an emerging artist based in Cork. He holds a First-Class Honours degree from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design (2025). Solo exhibitions include Beyond Eye Sea (Lavit Gallery, Co. Cork, 26th February - March 21st , 2026). Upcoming solo exhibitions include the Moving Image Bursary solo exhibition (Studio 12, Backwater Art Group, August 21st – September 25th, 2026). Recent group exhibitions include the three-person show Shapeshifting (GOMA, Co. Waterford, 2026), MTU STEAM Exhibition EARTH (James Barry Exhibition Centre, Co. Cork, 2025), SPECIES (MTU Gallery at 46 Grand Parade, Co. Cork, and Pallas University of Applied Sciences, Tartu, 2025), The Tale of the Norway Spruce and the Bark Beetle (1111 Gallery, Budapest, 2024), and TWISTER (MAMŰ Galéria, Budapest, 2024). He has received multiple awards and residencies, including the Cork Arts Society’s Student of the Year 2025, the Backwater Artists Group Moving Image Residency, the Sample Studios Network Award, and the Thesis Award. His work has been acquired through purchase prizes by Cork City Council, Cork County Council, Eli Lilly, and the MTU Arts Office.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Danny Foley’s visual art practice includes the mediums of drawing, painting, collage, animation, and installation, his work explores the role of the shapeshifter as both a conceptual framework and creative strategy. Through his work, he interprets concerns around non-human relations through a personal, mythical, and ecological lens. In Foley’s practice, shapeshifting is considered a playful process of making where preconceived  boundaries of the self are dissolved and being human is reimagined.

Through drawing he explores how charcoal, paint, and paper behave unpredictably, he trusts in a productive state of unknowing, making works that emerge through a process of deep and embodied play. This is reflected in his stop-motion animations, where shifting bodies traverse through a series of transformations. What remains at the end of each sequence are traces, reflecting changing and fluid states of being. Recently, this approach has expanded into collaged cut-outs that unfurl freely through space.

Together, his work culminates in an ecosystem of forms, each distinct yet interconnected. Just as the removal of a single entity can ripple and reshape complex systems of life, his work embraces multiplicity, transformation, and the in-between spaces of being in a shared world. Through Foley’s work, he asks: what possibilities emerge when we look beyond what is seen and recognise within ourselves the many and diverse others that make us human?

Photo: Joleen Cronin (c)