Sarah Dwyer
Penti Menti

Sarah Dwyer
Penti Menti 
15 November 2025 to 27 January 2026

Opening took place Saturday 15 November at 2pm

Penti Menti at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre is Sarah Dwyer’s first institutional exhibition in Ireland. Born in Cork, Dwyer has a significant international profile. The artist frequently combines drawing with painting, printmaking and sculpture, employing exuberant colour palettes and lively mark-making to depict semi-figurative and abstract imagery. Taking cues from Surrealism, Cobra and Abstract Expressionism, her practice explores image and form through the iterative nature of storytelling and poetry. Dwyer’s dynamic compositions process her own surroundings and the everyday experience—while also indulging our desire for play. The exhibition is titled after the Latin term for an alteration in painting, from the Italian word repentance. It speaks to her process of layering and removing paint, burying and excavating, digging into the experience of painting as it relates to both landscape and the unstable body.

The exhibition is curated by Eamonn Maxwell and supported by an Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon Touring Award and will travel to Highlanes Gallery Drogheda and Limerick City Gallery of Art in 2026 and be accompanied by a major monograph.

Sarah Dwyer (b. 1974, Ireland) is an artist who lives and works in London. She earned a Master’s in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2004 after an MFA from Staffordshire University in 2001. Her work has most recently been exhibited at Fabian Lang Gallery, Zurich; PiArtworks, London; Pigeon Park, Manor Place, London; in three solo shows at Josh Lilley Gallery, London; Hastings Contemporary, Hastings, UK; Hair & Nails Gallery, MN; Rochester Art Center, MN; Bloomberg Space, London, UK; Kyubidou Gallery, Tokyo, JP; Jane Lombard Gallery NY, NY; Fe McWilliam Gallery, NIR; Royal College of Art, London, UK; Saatchi Gallery, London, UK; The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK; Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin, IE.

See here for the essay: Methods from the Past — CoBrA and its influence on Sarah Dwyer by Morgan Amber Abdoelrazak.

This essay was researched and written as part of Morgan Amber Abdoelrazak’s internship at Uillinn (November 2025 to May 20206) from the MA art History and Curatorial Studies Programme, Faculty of Arts, Rijksuniversiteit, Groningen, NL.

In the studio with Sarah Dwyer from the Apollo Magazine. 

Marc O’Sullivan Vallig meets the Cork artist Sarah Dwyer.

https://www.sarahdwyer.com/

Image: Sarah Dwyer, Lumber Out, 2025, Oil and Oil Bar on Linen

Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre acknowledges the financial support of The Arts Council  / An Chomhairle Ealaíon in making these exhibitions possible.