Lara Quinn | Lady Lazarus

Cork Arts Society Student of the Year exhibition sponsored by Baker Tilly Accountants, Cork 

Lavit Gallery is delighted to present Lara Quinn as the sole recipient of the 2024 Cork Arts Society Student of the Year Award sponsored by Baker Tilly Accountants, Cork. This is an annual award given to one or more graduates of MTU Crawford College of Art & Design. In addition to an exhibition at Lavit Gallery the artist receives a cash prize of €1000 kindly sponsored by Baker Tilly Accountants, Cork. The Student of the Year Award was initiated in 1967 by Cork Arts Society, now trading as Lavit Gallery, with sculptor John Burke as the first recipient and subsequent awardees including Maud Cotter, Eilis O’Connell and Vivienne Roche. Initially the award was solely a cash prize but it later evolved to include an exhibition once a gallery had been established. More recent recipients of the award include Helen Cantwell & Bernie Hennessy, Stephen Doyle, Orlagh O’Byrne & Padraic Barrett, Deirdre Frost and Andrea Newman. 

‘Lady Lazarus’ is a new body of work produced by emerging Irish artist, Lara Quinn, for her first solo show, to be held in the vaults of Cork’s Lavit Gallery. Quinn’s practice is rooted in oil painting, however experimentation in sculpture and performance have become significant to the development of her work. Her conceptual practice attempts to subvert the story template of the Hero’s Journey’ by instead representing her own iteration of the Heroine’s Journey, adopting the figure of Lilith as a surrogate to assume the role of her alter ego throughout. The vague or utterly void backgrounds of Quinn’s paintings reserve attention solely for the figure, reinforcing the treatment of her body and her transformation as a central motif in the work. She describes this process as a demonstration of self-mythology. For Quinn, this involves reconceptualising archetypal roles within myths to both contextualise them in a modern context whilst also reinventing herself in the process.  

‘Lady Lazarus’ emerged in response to the unique exhibition space of Lavit Gallery’s vaults, a slightly subterranean recess within the main gallery interior. Imagining the vaults as a tomb or lair, Quinn has linked the space with another subterranean site that is of major significance within Irish folklore, namely Oweynagat Cave (Uaimh na gCat). Based on extensive research of caves and their symbolism, the uterus-shaped entrance of Oweynagat represents, in her work, the opening of an ancient womb, connecting the heritage of a pre-Christian Ireland with the present day. Quinn filmed a performance on site where she physically assumed the role of Lilith in an embodied demonstration of rebirth, ritualising a moment of transformation.  

New painted works have emerged from this project to accompany the filmed performance. The oil paintings portray Lilith as life-size, forced within narrow, horizontal canvases as if suppressed by layers of earth. Her body is represented nude throughout, emblematic of the narrative’s inherent vulnerability. 

Based in Backwater Artists Group Studios in Cork City, Quinn is a recent graduate from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design with a First-Class Honours Degree in Fine Art. In addition to receiving the Student of the Year Award from Lavit Gallery, Quinn was also received many other graduate awards including Best Thesis Prize and a Cork City Council Purchase Prize. The artist is hoping to develop her practice as an emerging Irish artist before enrolling in an MFA programme abroad in a few years time.  

Image provided: Lara Quinn, Film Still from Lady Lazarus, 2025, Performance to Camera, Digital Film.