Image: Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin ; Evanna Devine
Vanessa Donoso López’s exhibition ‘(O-O-O)’ is on view at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios in Dublin through 20 September 2026. The immersive installation brings together hundreds of ceramic vessels, clay samples, glazing and firing tests, natural pigments, textiles, drawings, kinetic sculptures, water features, living plants and studio ephemera, treating the gallery as an active environment rather than a space reserved for finished objects.
The exhibition reflects Donoso López’s experiences growing up in Barcelona and living in Ireland for more than 20 years. Her practice examines identity, migration and the cultural behaviours shaped by relocation and adaptation through materials including clay, soil, plants and water. Everyday forms such as bowls, cups and other vessels appear alongside shapes resembling stones or rocks, while more technically engineered works are placed among simpler forms and incomplete experiments.
Temple Bar Gallery + Studios describes the installation as a setting in which the boundaries between studio and gallery are deliberately complicated. Donoso López has moved much of her active studio practice from the building’s third floor into the ground-floor gallery, incorporating mismatched furniture, studio lighting, research materials, test pieces and objects made at different points in her practice. The resulting arrangement includes low-fired ceramics, clay-dyed fabrics, tiles, beads and other materials in an ecosystem that remains subject to change.
The title ‘(O-O-O)’ refers to object-oriented ontologies, a metaphysical theory that places humans, animals, plants, objects and ideas on an equal footing, each possessing its own agency and reality. The title also suggests an open-ended, nonverbal prompt: its repeated letterforms may evoke a sound, the shape of a mouth or a pattern whose meaning is not immediately fixed. The gallery additionally connects the abbreviation with the phrase “out of office,” reflecting the artist’s temporary relocation of her studio into the exhibition space.
Clay samples collected in Ireland and Spain are presented as materials that may be reactivated with water, reshaped or returned to the earth. Plants carry particular histories: some were grown from cuttings taken during residencies in Spain, while others were gifts or were gathered during the artist’s movement between homes, studios and residency locations. The exhibition’s natural mineral pigments and porous clays foreground the geological processes that produce different colours and affect how materials respond to firing. The work therefore considers material agency alongside migration, adaptation and transformation.
‘(O-O-O)’ is accompanied by a commissioned text by curator and teacher Caterina Almirall, translated into English, Catalan and Spanish and designed by Keith Tormey. Donoso López is a Three Year Studio Member at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, which supports artists’ studios and an exhibition programme of Irish and international contemporary art. The exhibition is supported by an Arts Council Project Award. Related programming includes a gallery walk-through with Donoso López and Temple Bar Gallery + Studios Director Cliodhna Shaffrey on 4 September, followed by the two-day textile workshop ‘The Colour of What We Inhabit’ on 5–6 September, led by Donoso López and Solange Dalannais using plants, soil and mineral pigments. The gallery will also host a late opening of the exhibition on 18 September, from 11am to 8pm.
