Biography
Niamh Flanagan is an Irish fine-art printmaker working from her Dublin studio across etching, collage, and mokuhanga (Japanese water-based woodblock printing). She graduated from the National College of Art and Design (NCAD), Dublin, in 2002 with First Class Honours in Fine Art Print, and is a member of Graphic Studio Dublin where she also serves as Projects Manager and Master Printer.
Her practice explores the search for utopias within the world and the restless desire to be somewhere else, using visual elements drawn from urban and rural, internal and external landscapes to describe a search for something that may be unattainable. The output combines copper-plate etching, aquatint, lithograph, photo-intaglio, collage etching, and — added during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns — mokuhanga; her 2021 essay 'New Mokuhanga Works 2021' on her studio site introduces her water-based-woodblock practice as an extension of the same place-and-displacement vocabulary into a portable, paper-and-pigment medium that can be carried with her wherever she travels.
Flanagan's mokuhanga 'whispering from another shore' was selected for the Kanreki exhibition mounted by Graphic Studio Dublin to mark its 60th anniversary, the cohort organised around the brief that all participating artists incorporate the colour red. The exhibition was shown at The Model, Sligo (2020), Graphic Studio Gallery, Dublin (April 2021), and travelled to the 9th International Mokuhanga Conference satellite event at Nara Prefectural Cultural Hall (30 November to 4 December 2021). Earlier, her solo show 'Dwellings of Mind and Space' (The Printmakers Gallery, Dublin, 2007) introduced the dwellings vocabulary that would carry forward through her later 'Liberitas Urbis,' 'We leave tonight' beach-huts series, and 'Looking Out' work.
She has received Arts Council Mentorship Scheme support, a Travel and Training Award, and a Culture Ireland grant. Residencies include Cill Rialaig Project (Kerry), Lindart International Artists' Colony (Slovenia), and Edinburgh Printmakers. International exhibitions include shows in Paris, Oslo, Poland, Slovenia, and Scotland. In 2013 she co-founded the Mobile Print Project with artist Clare Henderson, a touring printmaking-education initiative.
The slug 'niam-flannagan' is a transcription variant of her canonical name 'Niamh Flanagan.' For Hanga's purposes, Flanagan qualifies as a senior Irish print artist with verified GSD membership, NCAD-honours training, Kanreki-cohort selection, and an actively published mokuhanga practice from 2020 onward.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇮🇪Ireland
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
Frequently Asked Questions
Niamh Flanagan is an Irish fine-art printmaker working from her Dublin studio across etching, collage, and mokuhanga (Japanese water-based woodblock printing). She graduated from the National College of Art and Design (NCAD), Dublin, in 2002 with First Class Honours in Fine Art Print, and is a member of Graphic Studio Dublin where she also serves as Projects Manager and Master Printer.
Niamh Flanagan's work was shaped by the Contemporary Mokuhanga tradition in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Contemporary Mokuhanga: Contemporary mokuhanga (literally "wood-block print") encompasses artists working from approximately 1970 to the present who continue or reinvent traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques.