29th May – 12th June 2025

Aoife Cawley is a printmaker and textiles artist from county Kildare, now working between Ireland and Scotland. Graduating in 2024 with First Class Honours in Contemporary Art Practice from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, her work explores folklore, mythology, history, and early Christian saints, blending traditional medieval art forms with contemporary techniques.

Her vibrant, multi-layered screen prints and embroidered textiles have been exhibited widely in Ireland and the UK, and she has been featured in media outlets such as The Irish Times, RTÉ, and Tourism Ireland. In 2024, she was artist in residence at Creative Spark, Dundalk, and the Hugo Burge Foundation, in the Scottish Borders.

Aoife was awarded the RSA John Kinross Scholarship in 2024, and her work is held in collections such as the University of Dundee Museum. She was Limerick Printmaker’s International Artist in Residence for 2025, and also received a residency award from Edinburgh Printmakers for her work in the RSA 199th Annual Show.

This exhibition is predominantly made up of work created in Aoife’s first year post graduation from art school. “I’ve been extremely fortunate to spend a lot of the past year travelling to places of historic significance, exploring museums and objects, and translating this research into my work”, Aoife explains.

After her degree show, Aoife headed straight for the Scottish Borders on a Residency that provided her with time to explore the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. “I visited with the intention of creating work about the numerous saints associated with the island. I came with a copy of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People under my arm, prepared to illustrate the lives of St. Cuthbert and St. Aidan. However, I became fascinated by one particular object in the priory museum – The Domesday Stone. This fragment of stone was decorated on one side with a terrifying axe wielding group, while the other showed figures praying to a cross, with symbols linking to Judgement Day and the end of times. It made me take a moment to think of the human experience and how these monks must have felt seeing these terrifying raiders approaching their shores to destroy their community.”

“I was struck with this realisation when I visited the basement of York Minster, where on display was another ‘Domesday stone’. This one was carved in the 12th century and illustrated a horrifying depiction of what happens when you sin. You forget how much this idea of hell traumatised society and these frightening depictions in art and literature was a haunting reminder of what happened if you didn’t follow the church and its teachings. While my version of it, Inferno, is more of a Where’s Wally meets a Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror episode, littered with humorous figures, we must not forget the impact the original stone would have had on the people of the past.

On a lighter note, my screen prints featuring women in luxurious medieval outfits and towering headdresses were inspired by my visit to the British Library earlier on this year, where I was fortunate to catch the Medieval Women In Their Own Words show, which displayed medieval recipes for makeup and hair care, sparkling jewellery, and illumination after illumination of luxurious fashion. My piece Passion for Fashion shows how we are not that much different than our ancestors as we both share that idea of ‘beauty is pain’ while wearing uncomfortable clothes, partaking in painful grooming techniques such as plucking and waxing – all in the name of fashion.

I am fascinated by the past and my work aims to share that fascination with a wider audience. I aim to present my historical research with accessibility at its heart, using humorous drawings and bold bright colours to bring it to life.”

Read our interview with Aiofe over on our blog.

Aoife Cawley’s solo show runs at Six Foot Gallery from 29th May – 12th June 2025. See more of Aoife’s work over on Instagram or on her website.