Announcing FSAS 2025 Grad Award Recipients

We are delighted to announce the 2025 FSAS Grad Award recipients.

In continuing our commitment to supporting the professional development of visual artists and the creation of new work, Fire Station Artists’ Studios is offering 6 awards to recent graduates from 3 Third-Level Institutions (IADT, NCAD and TUD).

Through partnering with IADT, NCAD & TUD, FSAS aims to support recent fine art graduates at a critical, and often difficult, transition point at the start of their careers upon leaving the supported environment of third level education. By providing free access to working space and equipment as well as technical support, curatorial advice and small bursaries, FSAS aims to support the development of graduate artists in their careers as professional visual artists.

This year’s awardees in Sculpture and Digital Media are: Ciara Davitt (Sculpture, NCAD), Lauren Haughey (Digital Media, NCAD), Róise McGagh (Sculpture, IADT), Megan O’Carolan (Digital Media, TUD), Vicky Ochala (Sculpture, TUD) and Anastassia Varabiova (Digital Media, IADT).

Ciara Davitt is a multi-disciplinary artist based between Kildare and Dublin. She aims to create cycles of taking, giving and sharing through her work.
Her graduate work, “did you know gold comes from the stars” emerges from research on the socio-political conditions of extraction and land. Speaking to the heavy contrasts present between the timescales of the landscape and human productivity, harsh and soft materials, and fast and slow processes, are used.
Acidity of the soil, field recordings, casts of her Dad’s fingers and reclaimed metal are some of the things implemented-drawing out a conversation around rupture, time, wealth distribution and social impact.

Lauren Haughey is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Dublin. Her practice explores performance, sculpture, installation, moving image and food art. Her work has a foundation in research and contemporary cultural theory, and centres on creating myths that provide alternative imaginations of sociopolitical futures.
She has participated in exhibitions such as ‘Synthetic Memory’ and ’Exit Strategy’ and created site specific work such as ‘Source, Stream, Encryption’ and ‘Into the Furze’. Haughey has also exhibited work at the 40th EVA International; creating a food art intervention for ‘Kale Kulturs’. She has exhibited internationally as part of ‘Hear The Voice’, Poznan (PL).

Róise McGagh is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Dublin. Their practice centres on the relationship between the art object, the space it inhabits and the experiential concerns of the viewer. Using utility materials, McGagh creates visually sparse installations investigating support and the formal, spatial and affective contexts in which it occurs. McGagh’s work is influenced by concepts and philosophies of social space, but it is also rooted in the ongoing practical investigation of materiality and form. They are part of the Douglas Hyde Student Forum 2025 and have recently exhibited in In the Making: Mud Between the Toes, Pallas Projects/Studios (2025) and Fractal, Powerscourt Townhouse (2024).

Megan O’Carolan an Irish artist based in Dublin and a recent Fine Art graduate from TU Dublin. Working across mixed media, including digital and analogue photography, film, sound, and drawing. My practice explores the intersections of feminism, activism, and folklore. I investigate how stories, both personal and collective, shape identity, challenge dominant narratives, and reclaim forgotten voices. Grounded in an Irish cultural context, my work seeks to merge tradition with resistance, using art as a space for reflection, disruption, and reimagining inherited mythologies.

Vicky Ochala is a Dublin-based artist and recent graduate of BA Fine Art at TUD. I work using installation, through various materials and processes including welding, casting, screen printing and video. I’m interested in exploring personal narratives through political histories and architectural structures. My work is
inspired by my Polish heritage, which I explore through various components rooted in the stories told by my relatives. Though deeply personal, the work
speaks to collective histories and experiences of all Polish and Eastern European people affected by this period.

Anastassia Varabiova is a Belarusian-born artist based in Dublin. Using the language of internet culture, Varabiova reflects on the absurdity of screen-based living and the odd behaviours such a lifestyle encourages. Their work engages with the social and material impacts of digital technologies through performance, installation, and video.

Varabiova is part of the Douglas Hyde Student Forum 2025 and has recently exhibited at the Eurofound 50^th Anniversary Open Day (2025), Pallas Projects/Studios (2025), Powerscourt Town Centre (2024), and the Irish Student Exhibition at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance and Space Design (2023).