University of Limerick played host to a ceremony to mark the presentation of two significant visual art and literary awards.
The Irish American Cultural Institute announced the winners of the 2022 O’Malley Award for Visual Art and the Butler Literary Award.
The ceremony took place in Plassey House, which houses the Irish American Cultural Institute’s O'Malley Collection, on Wednesday, September 27.
The Irish American Cultural Institute said it was delighted to announce that the 2022 O’Malley Award of €5,000 goes to Vukasin Nedeljković for his ongoing project Asylum Archive and the Butler Literary Award 2022 of $2,000 to Kerri Ni Dochartaigh for her book Thin Places (Cannongate 2020).
The O’Malley Visual Arts Award was inaugurated in 1989 and is given in memory of Ernie O’Malley and Helen Hooker O’Malley. Previous winners include Tony O’Malley, James Coleman, Dorothy Cross and Alice Maher. The award is given for outstanding work created during the period since the previous award.
The judging panel for the O’Malley Visual Arts Award 2022 was made up of Sean Lynch, artist curator and writer, Johanne Mullan, curator, Irish Museum of Modern Art and Helena Tobin, Curator and director, South Tipperary Arts Centre, Clonmel.
It was given to Vukašin Nedeljković for his ongoing work documenting the experience of people living in detention centres and ‘the architecture of confinement, ghosts, traces, remnants – what is left after people have been transferred or deported’.
The Butler Literary Award was initiated in 1962 by Patrick and Aimee Butler of St Paul, Minnesota, and continued until 2002 when the award was temporarily halted. The award was for a deserving Irish author in English or Irish. In 2018 the Irish American Cultural Institute (IACI) revived the award and changed its focus to emerging literary writers in Ireland. It is offered every two years. Previous awardees include Paula Meehan, Colum McCann and Ciaran Carson.
The 2022 Butler Literary Award was granted for what the judges deemed the best first publication by an Irish writer in any literary form, or a first publication in a new form by an already published writer, in the period between 1 August 2020 and 30 June 2022.
This year’s judges were Wendy Erskine, short story writer; Dr Eibhear Walshe, novelist, critic, and Director of Creative writing, University College Cork; and Helen Meany, journalist and arts consultant.
The judges announced a shortlist of nine titles for the 2022 Butler Literary Award on September 5th. They are as follows:
Ana Maria Crowe Serrano, In the Dark, Turas Press, 2021
Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times, Orion, 2021
Olivia Fitzsimons, The Quiet Whispers Never Stop, John Murray, 2022
Victoria Kennefick, Eat Or We Both Starve, Carcanet, 2021
Roisin Kiberd, The Disconnect, Profile Books, 2021
John Patrick McHugh, Pure Gold, New Island Books, 2021
Kerri Ní Dochartaigh, Thin Places, Canongate, 2021
Megan Nolan, Acts of Desperation, Jonathan Cape, 2021
Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe, Auguries of a Minor God, Faber & Faber, 2021
The Award was granted to Kerri Nī Dochartaig for what the judges agreed was an intense fusion of memoir and nature.
The judging panels were chaired by Catherine Marshall, curator and art historian, and member of the Board of Directors of the IACI.
The IACI thanked UL, home of the O’Malley Art collection, for graciously hosting the awards ceremony.
The Irish American Cultural Institute (IACI) was founded in 1962 by Dr Eoin McKiernan, a scholar in the field of Irish Studies and the United States. The current Patron for the IACI is President, Michael D Higgins. The raison d’etre of the IACI is to promote an intelligent appreciation of Ireland, the role and contributions of the Irish in America and the many facets of Irish Culture.
The O’Malley collection is on long term, permanent display in Plassey House. It comprises 57 works by distinguished Irish artists working in the early 20th century and includes paintings by Mainie Jellett, Evie Hone, Paul Henry and Jack B Yeats.