Age & Opportunity Arts is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2025 Artist Awards.
The Professional Development Artist Awards have been awarded to composer Christine Tobin and visual artists Ana Colomer and Julie Merriman.
The Emerging Artist Awards go to artist Eileen Fair, visual artists Aoife Nolan and Claire Hurley, and theatre maker Margaret Hannon.
Commenting on the announcement, Arts Programme Manager Dr. Tara Byrne said:
“We hope that these awards provide the practical support needed by artists of 50+ and at the same time advocate for life-long creativity and the potential and commitment of artists in Ireland.”
Professional Development Award
This award aims to offer support for an artist to undertake professional development opportunities.
Past Award Recipients – 2024 Recipients: Declan Gorman & Sharon Murphy, 2023 Recipient: Maree Hensey , 2022 Recipient: Siobhan Piercy
Christine Tobin
Christine Tobin is a vocalist/composer who’s been active professionally since 1990 with 12 critically acclaimed albums under her name & many projects. She grew up in Dublin, then later moved to London after being awarded a scholorship to attend the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Tobin was an integral part of the London contemporary scene for many years then moved to NYC in 2015 where I became part of the city’s creative music world before returning to Ireland in 2020. Awards include a BASCA British Composer Award, an Edinburgh Festival Herald Angel Award, a BBC Jazz Award & a UK Parliamentary Jazz Award. Christine has performed at major venues around the world such as Birdland (NYC), The Royal Festival Hall (London) & festivals such as Vancouver International Jazz Festival, Berlin Jazz Festival etc. “…feisty original music …a masterclass in songcraft.” BBC Music Magazine *****
Ana Colomer
Ana Colomer is a visual artist based in Ennis Co. Clare. Ana is a socially engaged artist and an arts educator. She is a tutor for Creative Youth, LCETB, a Creative Associate for Creative Schools, Arts Council, and an Associate Artist for Helium Arts. She holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts by Seville University, a H. Dip, and a Certificate in Principles of Art Therapy by CIT.
Ana’s creative practice includes painting, puppetry, animation, film, and multimedia installations that combine three or four elements.
Her work is interactive and thought provoking.
Julie Merriman
Working with communities, organisations and businesses, my work examines the history of mark making in the context of language: drawn, written and programmed. Using present-day and historical data as research material, I investigate modes of inscription, replication and transmission. My work, a combination of drawing and print, utilises outdated office copying materials and an obsolete print technology, mimeograph.
Recent: Artist in Residence, 14 Henrietta Street, Dublin City Council Culture Company 2024. Arts Grant Award, Professional Development 2024, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. Interface Inagh International Residency 2023 – Detroit, Stockholm studio collective & artist-run gallery, Stockholm. Ports, Past and Present, 2020-23 University College Cork, Aberystwyth University, the University of Wales Trinity St David and Wexford County Council. Visual Arts Bursary, The Arts Council 2021. The Markievicz Award, 2020, The Arts Council on behalf of The Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. Visual Arts Bursary, The Arts Council 2019.
Window, 14 Henrietta Street, Mimeograph on paper
Emerging Artist Award
This award aims to encourage and support older artists who are newly emerging and may benefit from mentoring or other opportunities to further develop their practice.
Past Award Recipients – 2024 Recipients: Fiona Breen, Theresa Ryder & Annette Smyth, 2023 Recipient: Katie Nolan , 2022 Recipient: Colette Cullen
Eileen Fair
Eileen Fair is a legally blind multi-disciplinary artist from Galway. She returned to full-time education in her early 50’s, graduating in Contemporary Art – 3D Practice and earning the ATU Academic Excellence Award 2023. Longlisted for the RDS Visual Arts Awards 2023, she was also honoured with a Global Undergraduate Award as the 2024 Regional Winner for Ireland in Visual Arts. With empathy for under-supported or unresolved social injustices, Eileen created two ongoing art collections: Through the Eye of a Needle addresses her experience of sight loss, dealing directly with stigma towards disability, while Ethereal Playground challenges the unsettling legacy of Irish mother and baby homes. Environmental concerns prompt her use of every conceivable form of found object in her drawings, textiles, paintings and installations, some of which are tactile or kinetic. Through collecting multiple byproducts and repurposing waste materials, she deliberately works more sustainably by reducing the need to purchase raw materials. Materiality matters, particularly when juxtaposing subverted rudimentary materials and reimagined found objects, resulting in structures that are more beautiful or more profound in their second life.
Eileen has exhibited work with Saolta Arts, RHA, An Gailearaí. Irish Workhouse Centre, Hamilton Gallery, Signal Arts, National Botanical Gardens, Roscommon Arts Centre, Brigit’s Gardens, Botanical Art Expo, Bloom, European Parliament – Brussels and Europa Gallery – Dublin.
Ethereal Playground, Exhibition 2023
Drawing on paper in landscape, West Cork, 2025.
Aoife Nolan
Aoife Nolan is an interdisciplinary visual artist. She holds a Master’s in Fine Art from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, 2025. Nolan’s work explores connection and memory, as experienced through deep time, land, language and the body.
A research methodology situated outdoors within the landscape is integral to her way of working, contextualising sites of connection between the body and land as active spaces of potential exchange, where perceptions may shift and new understandings or inquiry may arise.
Working through drawing, photography, print, film and writing, Nolan is drawn to arts capacity to be simultaneously an archive and an active field of communication.
Her work proposes to question; if we had access to a language deeply connecting us, across past and present timelines, lived and subconscious memories, would such a language impact how we interact with our collective home, earth? How we feel about it, relate to it, and ultimately integrate as part it.
Nolan has exhibited in Ireland, the UK and the USA. She has received several awards including funding from the Arts Council of Ireland, 2022 and 2025. Her work is included in permanent collection of the Office of Public Works, Ireland.
Margaret Hannon
Maggie is an actor and theatre maker working as a freelance artist based between Dublin, Cork and Donegal. She qualified with MA (hons) in Authorial Acting from the theatre faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (DAMU) in Prague in June 2018.
Maggie is bilingual in Irish and English and a regular actor on TG4’s Ros na Rún (2019-23) and Crá (2024) also for BBCNI.
She has been supported in her theatre work by bursaries from The Arts Council of Ireland, Donegal County Council, An Grianan Theatre, The Ulster Scots Foundation, and The Arts Council NI through Echo Echo Dance Theatre Company.
She wrapped on Ciaran Creagh’s latest feature for Hill Sixteen Productions, Samanta Nobody, in November 2024.
She played Hilda in Maccana Teoranta’s new radio series for Newstalk, The Corona Monologues, directed by Kevin Mc Cann (2025).
‘Simultaneously grotesque, stunning, hilarious and tragic; her performance is unforgettable’- Sunday Times (Irish Edition) review.
‘Sister Black’ Virtual Theatre Tour
“Animal Body”, 2024 Natural Sculpture
Claire Hurely
Claire is an Irish artist from Limerick, whose current work explores the materiality of bodily forms through a practice of expanded sculpture and photography that specifically engages with nature and natural materials found in the landscape.
Having a B.A degree in Archaeology (UCG) informs her work and interest in human ritual, culture and myth and the material ways we express ourselves as humans to find greater meaning. She has received awards in fashion design and millinery and just completed a Post Graduate diploma in Art and Ecology in NCAD.
She has been funded by the Arts Council of Ireland, Culture Ireland, Creative Europe and Limerick City Council and is an Associate member of Spacecraft Studios in Limerick city.
