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Fergal Styles

Fergal Styles (b. 1992) is an Irish artist living and working in Dublin, Ireland. He uses a wide variety of media to create images that move between low realism and high abstraction. Fergal graduated from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin (2016) and in 2018 completed a fellowship at Wendy’s Subway Brooklyn, NYC. Fergal has received funding awards from public bodies such as the Arts Council of Ireland – including the Visual Arts Bursary - and DLR Arts Emerging Artist Award. His first solo show ‘Fools and Dreamers’ took place at Hang Tough Contemporary, Dublin in 2022. Selected group exhibitions include, OPEN CALL, Paintingssince2000, London (2025), New Neighbours with Olivia O’Dwyer at South Tipperary Arts Centre (2024), Works on Paper 5, Blue Shop Gallery, London (2024), A Room With a View, Vardan Gallery, Los Angeles (2024), and There it was. staring back at me, Janet Rady Gallery, London (2023). His work is held in both public (OPW. State Art Collection) and private collections.

Fergal Styles’s practise is centred around drawing and painting. Nominally a figurative painter, he employs a wide variety of media to create images specific in detail, but that feel abstract in aggregate. In his seeming adherence to the traditional categories of figurative painting, we are presented with a world that appears bizarrely normal. There are reoccurring motifs aplenty, of cats, dogs, potted plants, and domestic interiors, yet his use of materials and approach to subject matter is playful and irreverent, giving far more weight to feeling through the materials, rather than bowing before trivial facts. His compositions evolve intuitively with each passage of paint, or layer of collage, responding to the last. It is a vision of the world appears, intensely saturated, emotional, intimate and even still mysterious.

‘’Styles paints the domestic, exploring the internal human experience within the context of (his) interior … offering an alternative narrative where, in solitude, we take time to make, remember, and travel towards ourselves.’’ – Neva Elliot.

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Resume

Born. 1992
Currently Working. Dublin, Ireland.

Education
BA (Hons) 1:1: Fine Art and Visual Culture, National College of Art and Design
(2016)

 Upcoming

 A Splendid Gateway, Rathfarnham
Castle, Dublin, (Nov 25)

Untitled Solo Show, Fráma Gallery, Naas, (Oct 25).

Solo Exhibitions

Fools and Dreamers, HangTough
Contemporary, Dublin (2022)

Graduate showcase, NCAD (2016)

Oh the Great and Earnest Task, Eblana House, Dublin (2016)


Selected Group Exhibitions

OPEN CALL, Paintingssince2000,
London (2025)

OXO 2024, Outset Gallery, Galway, (2024).

Artform Winter, Mount Congreve Gardens, (2024)

Works on Paper 6, Blue Shop Gallery,
London, (2024)

Good Friday Painting Show,
Dean Arts Studio, Dublin, (2024)

New Neighbours, with Olivia O’
Dwyer, South Tipperary Arts Centre, Clonmel, (2024)

A Room With a View, Vardan
Gallery, Los Angles, (2024)

Samhain, The CopperHouse,
Dublin 2023

there it was.
staring back at me, Janet Rady Fine Art, London
(2023)

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