Studio 35 – Kate O’Neill, Reuben Brown, Mollie Browne, Claire Ritchie and Síofra Minnis
Opens: Thursday 12 March, 6–8:30pm
Exhibition Dates: Thursday 12 March – Thursday 16 April, 10am–5pm
Studio 35 gathers five artists; Kate O’Neill, Reuben Brown, Mollie Browne, Claire Ritchie and Síofra Minnis, who have each been the recipient of the QSS Artist Studios & Gallery Graduate Bursary. Since its establishment in 2019, the Bursary has been awarded to a graduate of Belfast School of Art annually, providing them with studio provision and supporting their transition from university into professional practice. Over the course of five years, Studio 35 has hosted five different artists, each leaving their mark on the space before passing it onto the next recipient.
The exhibition marks the first time these artists will be shown together, highlighting the range and variety of practices that have emerged from a shared site of production. From the earliest, now five years into their career, to the most recent, who recently began their studio journey, Studio 35 presents a spectrum of approaches and trajectories, reflecting not only on individual practice, but also on the role of QSS Artist Studios & Gallery in supporting early-career artists in Belfast. Rather than advancing a single narrative, the exhibition traces how this shared studio has acted as a grounding force, anchoring and propelling the distinct practices each artist continues to pursue today.
This exhibition is curated by Reuben Brown.
12 Mar 2026
–
16 Apr 2026
10:00am
–
5:00pm
2nd Floor, The Arches Centre, 11-13 Bloomfield Ave, Belfast, BT5 5AA
About The Artists
Mollie Browne
Mollie Browne, a fine artist from Cookstown now living in Belfast, completed a First
Class BA Hons Degree in Fine Art at Ulster University (2023).
Awards include, ACNI SIAP General Art Award, QSS Graduate Bursary Award, Engine Room Gallery Graduate Award, PS2 Graduate Award and The Thomas Devlin Fund, The Community Foundation for NI. ACNI’s Artist of the Month (December 2023). Shortlisted
finalist for the Ingram Prize and the Global Design Graduate Show in collaboration with Gucci.
The main technique created by Browne, Acetone Manipulation on photographic images, explores her state of mind, feelings of disconnect and anxiety. Her identity and others can be seen to dissolve, capturing a sense of existential crisis.
Kate O’Neill
Kate O’Neill is a multidisciplinary artist based in Belfast. O’Neill has exhibited across Northern Ireland (Golden Thread Gallery, QSS, PS2, Bangor Walled Garden), England (HPAC, Leeds Playhouse, Spodeworks), Croatia and Poland. She was selected for Fresh 2025 at the British Ceramics Biennial. O’Neill was awarded the Creative Bursary Award 2023 by Belfast City Council. Graduating from Fine Art at the Belfast School of Art, O’Neill specialised in Sculpture and Lens. Previously studied traditional sculpture at the Academy of Fine Art in Zagreb, Croatia.
Motivated by feminist geography, O’Neill examines the effect of society’s gender binaries on behaviours, activities and experiences of a place. She creates artworks which defy patriarchal classification in hopes of dismantling the sexual inequality embedded within visual language. Her artworks insist feminized handicrafts are a matter of generational and societal resistance.
Claire Ritchie
Claire Ritchie’s work emerges from wandering, using the physical act of moving through a landscape as a way to observe and gather source material, particularly the shifting states of the natural world and the human-made traces that interrupt them. Ritchie constructs sculptural, wall-mounted assemblages and installations that extend from a practice grounded in painting and its expanded field. She is interested in the choreography of everyday movement, how we pass through the world and how our encounters with place leave their mark on us, just as we leave ours on it. These infra-ordinary details – a shadow cast by railings, a fleeting reflection, a shift in texture – guide her decisions in the studio.
This sense of movement, responsiveness, and negotiation with space carries into the final installation of the work, where she treats the act of placing and arranging pieces as an extension of the path.
Claire Ritchie graduated from Belfast School of Art in 2024 with a BA Hons in Fine Art. Recent exhibitions: Where the Pavement Ends 2025, (Solo Exhibition) QSS, Belfast; Emergence VIII 2025, QSS, Belfast; RDS Visual Arts Awards 2024, RHA, Dublin; Royale Arcade Academy Exhibition 2024, Arcade Studios, Belfast; and The Shape of a Pocket, Catalyst Arts, Belfast, 2024.
Reuben Brown
Reuben Brown [he/him] (b.2001) is an emerging visual artist, club-creative and researcher based between Belfast and Dublin; Ireland. He is currently undertaking a Masters of Research at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD); Dublin, supported by NCAD through the Postgraduate Futures Scholarship.
His ongoing research project “club [construction]” investigates the spatial, archival and embodied dimensions of queer club- culture, through experimental exhibition-making, participation and site-based inquiry. He has exhibited locally, nationally and internationally, including several notable solo-exhibitions and curatorial projects in Belfast, Dublin and London. Recent notable solo- exhibitions include; “€URODANC€” at Pallas Projects/Studios; Dublin [June/July 2025] and “White Knuckle Forever” at The Backshop, Culterim Gallery; Berlin [March 2025]. His artistic practice has been supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland through the National Lottery, An Chomhairle Ealaíon / The Arts Council of Ireland and White Claw© Hard Seltzer IE/UK.