Shapeshifting | GOMA Graduate Award Exhibition 2026
Danny Foley, Tanja Novacic and Patrick Penney
29 January – 21 February 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday 29 January | 6–8pm Location: GOMA Gallery, 6/7 Lombard Street, Waterford All Welcome!
GOMA Gallery of Modern Art is delighted to present the GOMA Graduate Award Exhibition 2026, an annual celebration of the exceptional talent emerging from Ireland’s art colleges. Each year, GOMA Waterford aims to highlight the wealth of talent graduating annually in the country by awarding selected graduates with an exhibition. This year, three artists have been chosen for the award: Danny Foley, Tanja Novacic and Patrick Penney.
About the Artists
Tanja Novacic
Working across sculpture, textiles, embroidery, and mixed media, Tanja Novacic explores folklore, memory, and the intersection of myth and lived experience. Working with light, shadow, and architectural forms, she draws from storytelling, ritual, and symbolism, merging these sources with familial history and personal narratives.
Patrick Penney
Patrick Penney’s focus at present is on the ideas of perception, inclusion, omission, and layers of history – how omission creates a narrative of history that is incomplete. In broader historical terms, but also personal familial terms, he has been examining atomic and nuclear history with a focus on William Penney. He works with archival materials that exist only in copies, as the originals no longer exist. Classification and declassification obscure and reveal information and imagery, changing the perception of the historical narrative. All of this adds to the historical context of the world we now occupy, and his intention is to establish a body of work that serves to warn and contribute to these things never being allowed to happen again.
Danny Foley
Through an intuitive and experimental approach to drawing, painting, and animation, Danny Foley’s work explores the shapeshifter as both a concept and creative strategy within his artistic processes. Within his art practice, shapeshifting is considered an active, curious, and playful means of making art – where the edges of the self-dissolve and the human is reimagined. Mixed-media works and stop-motion animations unfold as metamorphic journeys within shared spaces, where creatures shift in and out of form, mirroring changes in state and being.
Gallery opening hours: 11am–5pm Tuesday to Saturday. Closed Sunday and Monday.
Curated by Jenna Whelan