Board of Directors

Since graduating with First Class Honours and the Academic Achievement Award in Contemporary Art at Cluain Mhuire, ATU Galway, Kate has been working in non-formal art education on project-based contracts and developing her art practice through residencies and exhibitions. She is the Education Officer at TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, and recently worked as an Exhibition Mediator at the Venice Biennale. Her practice explores moments of (in)action, social and sexual dynamics, and engaging with art as an act of care.

Elizabeth Curran is a painter, performer, writer, and singer. Curran is a Galway native recently completing a Masters in Creative Practice in the Centre for Creative Arts and Media, ATU Galway. Curran graduated with a BA (Hons) degree in Painting from NCAD in 2013. The artist is currently on the Board of Directors at 126 Artist - Run Gallery in Galway.

Curran’s work is laced with mythology of the self, with strong correspondence to universal mysticism and Irish tradition, folklore and myth. Curran utilizes reflections of the self and personal experience, embodied as the protagonist of the work, to which finds her identity rooted in her homeland of the west of Ireland.

Naoise Sheridan is an award-winning Irish artist based between Galway and Wicklow. Her practice is primarily focused on human-kind's forgotten place on the earth as creatures of nature, producing large-scale botanical paintings, installations, sculptures and murals featuring naturalistic creatures of the nude female figure. She is Co-Director of the 126 Gallery, Galway and has organised & curated multiple exhibitions over the past number of years. She has been awarded funding by the Arts Council of Ireland and graduated with a BA(H) in Contemporary Art in 2020. She currently works out of MART Studios and is a member of the Westend Art Collective. Alongside her practice she also creates installations for Irish music festivals such as Electric Picnic and has launched the Bleached Jungles project, a community-inclusive mural project aiming to reintroduce elements of nature into urbanized spaces.

Conor Burke is a multi-media Visual Artist based in Galway City. Burke has a Masters in Art & Design Education (TUS, Limerick) as well as a BA in Fine Art/ Art and Design with digital media from ATU (Galway). He is a founding member of Unit-22 artist collective and currently works out of Mart studios Galway.

Burke incorporates strong architectural and construction based elements into his work which are often laden with political and philosophical underpinnings which emanate from his role as community activist, Burke's work is concerned with processes of change, with a strong emphasizes on transitions between concept and materiality.

Meabh Noonan graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 2016 with a BA in History of Art and Architecture with French. She began working in the arts as a project assistant at the Trinity College Dublin Art Collection, and she has since worked for a variety of arts organisations, festivals and smaller artist-run studios. She was awarded a postgraduate diploma in Digital Content Creation from the Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dun Laoghaire in 2021. She currently works in communications for the Contemporary Music Centre, an all-island archive and resource centre for contemporary music from Ireland.  Meabh is a member of the editorial team for An Capall Dorcha, an independent literary and visual arts journal founded in 2019, and has been on the board of directors at 126 since July 2021.

Lindsay Merlihan is a Michigan-born, Galway-based visual artist working through mixed media, painting, and creative production. Her art is inspired by concepts of depth psychology, alchemy and archetype informed by a certificate in Jungian Psychology with Art Therapy and an MA of Art, Psyche and the Creative Imagination through Limerick School of Art and Design. She is the creative director of the Irish language project ALLTAR which programs Irish arts through live events.

As a Co-Director of the 126 Board, she is passionate about platforming pioneers of Irish arts who are responsive and forward-thinking. Her involvement began in December of 2021.

Mary McGraw is an American artist and arts worker based in Galway. She’s been working within the arts sector in Ireland for over 3 years and is passionate about empowering emerging artists. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a focus on Photography from the University of Notre Dame, where her ethnographic photo exhibition on the Benedictine Nuns of Kylemore Abbey won top prizes for best thesis and best photo exhibition. She also has a Master of Arts in Digital Media from University of Galway and has been working primarily in Arts Marketing since 2020. Mary joined the board of directors at 126 Artist-Run Gallery in July of 2021.

Sona Smedkova is a Czech multidisciplinary artist based in Galway, Ireland. Identity, in-between spaces, and models of disruption are investigated through a nexus of cultural displacement and spatial reasoning within abstract paintings.   Smedkova recently gained First-class Honours from a Master’s in Creative Practice, at the School of Design and Creative Arts, ATU, Galway. In 2020 Smedkova was an Integral member of the student-led curating team for an exhibition for GMIT contemporary art graduates Not a Degree Show, Printworks, funded by Galway City Art Council. She was awarded an Agility Award by Arts Council Ireland in 2021. Most recently, her work was exhibited in a group show DÉAD in Transmediale, Berlin under the Creative Pathways Programme, funded by Irish Embassy Berlin and Goethe Institute Ireland.