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The Royal Hibernian Academy’s Futures 10 exhibition is an annual showcase for emerging artists “around who exists a growing critical and curatorial consensus”. It’s not a compendium, like the RHA Annual Exhibition. Rather, numbers are limited, so that each artist faces the challenge and opportunity of staging a solo show.
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The RHA’s director, Patrick T Murphy, and curator Ruth Carroll choose the exhibitors. They could, Murphy notes, opt for an external curator, as several group shows do, but in the nature of things they see a great deal of work by emerging artists, so why shouldn’t they put their own judgment on the line and see how things go?
That’s what they’ve done, selecting seven artists from a broad, generally strong field of possibilities. The artists are not necessarily the best younger ones around, but all are interesting, with something distinctively of their own to offer.
Some will go on to develop as important talents in the long term, but, as Murphy observes of the artists highlighted in previous Futures exhibitions, some may disappear from the scene entirely. Sustaining a practice, he points out, requires absolute commitment – and, he might have added, the occasional lucky break.
Futures 10 runs until Until October 24th at the RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin 2; royalhibernianacademy.ie
