In the Well     

Ailbhe Reilly Tuite

Vaults

3 July - 26 July 2025

Ailbhe Reilly-Tuite is an artist working in multiple media in Cork. They graduated from Fine Art in MTU Crawford College of Art & Design in 2024. Their work explores imaginary realms through drawing, sculpture, moving image, and sound. They create artworks which welcome the viewer into playful and contemplative spaces and explore patterns of movement with a focus on the concept of an individual within a collective.  

This exhibition is an expansion on one segment of Ailbhe’s previous installation Dreamscape, which presented a looping narrative of death and rebirth, encompassing phases of play, loss, dormancy and journeying. ‘The Well’ is a chapter of this story which represents dormancy. In the well, the character in Dreamscape creates a mound around itself as it settles deeper into dormancy, until it is ready to exit and begin its journey.  

“With this exhibition I have intended to amplify this sensation of dormancy and create an installation imagining life at the bottom of a well, where there are creatures covered and hidden in deep sleep, as well as others growing and moving, not in dormant phases. As a visitor to the installation, I invite you to consider yourself one of the creatures existing at the bottom of the well, moving about the space.  

Have you just woken? Are you preparing for sleep? Are you falling without control? Are you going somewhere? Are you being reborn?”  

Image: Ailbhe Reilly-Tuite, First Mound, 2025 (detail) 

2024 recipient of the Cork Arts Society Vaults Award: This new award gives one or more graduates of MTU Crawford College of Art & Design the opportunity to exhibit in the unique vault spaces at Lavit Gallery. Graduates are selected based on the suitability of their work for the space.