2026 will mark fifteen years since Ormston House was founded by Mary Conlon. We are commissioning several new works for this anniversary, including an essay by artist and writer Nathan O’Donnell about the history of the organisation and its place within Ireland’s cultural landscape. We have invited O’Donnell for a research residency in early December to inform his writing.

O’Donnell is a writer and curator who works in the fields of experimental publishing, artists’ writing, and participatory practice. He is one of the co-editors of PVA (Journal + Books), and he also regularly makes publications through artistic collaborations, commissions, and public art projects. O’Donnell has been a curatorial associate on several projects at the Irish Museum of Modern Art since 2018 and he also works across other organisations and institutions. He lectures on contemporary art and experimental publishing at NCAD and Trinity College Dublin.

O’Donnell was also one of five artists who participated in Ormston House’s River Residencies, alongside his frequent collaborator Clare Bell. O’Donnell and Bell’s artwork ‘Solarium’ and O’Donnell’s publication Book of Invasions, published by Ormston House, are both the outcome of this residency along the Tipperary shoreline of Lough Derg.

Image by Louis Haugh.