Struàn Bell—Pinky Ring

Pallas Projects are pleased to present Struàn Bell—Pinky Ring, the sixth exhibition of our 2026 Artist-Initiated Projects programme.

Pinky Ring presents a series of plaster relief carvings shaped by ideas of speculative function, symbolic architectures, and objects of personal affection. Faceted gemstones appear throughout the works, functioning like small acts of emphasis or attachment.

Chosen in the way one might select a piece of jewellery to mark a moment of significance, they introduce a sense of private importance to scenes, systems, and objects that otherwise remain speculative and unresolved.

Recurring forms move throughout the works utilising the logic of instructions, symbols, or traces of larger systems. Arrows, chambers, vessels, and passages suggest consequence or function without ever resolving into stable meaning. The titles reflect this same tension, moving between plain description and private implication.

In Pinky Ring, materials such as oil paints, stains, pastels, hides, and inks introduce softness, ornament, texture, and vulnerability into the surfaces of the reliefs. Combined with plaster and stone, they allow sincerity and ambiguity to coexist within works that seem structured or severe. At the core of the exhibition is an interest in how personal objects can absorb memory, attachment, and become charged with emotional weight.

Accompanying the exhibition is a commissioned text by Cork-based curator Katie O’Grady.

Biography:

Struàn Bell (b. 2000, St. Helier, Jersey) is a Scottish-Irish visual artist working across drawing, sculpture, painting, and art writing. He lives and works in Cork, where he is a studio member at Sample-Studios. A graduate of Limerick School of Art and Design (BFA, First Class Honours, 2023), Bell has received both the Arts Council of Ireland’s Agility Award (2024) and Visual Arts Bursary (2025), and was a member of The Douglas Hyde Student Forum in 2024. Alongside his studio practice, he is actively involved in exhibition production across Ireland, working as a technician with organisations including EVA International, Limerick City Gallery of Art, and The Glucksman.

Bell’s work has been exhibited widely across Ireland, with presentations at The Douglas Hyde Gallery, The Complex, Ormston House, and other artist-led and institutional contexts. His practice centres on the construction of symbolic and speculative forms, objects and scenes that inhabit a space between architecture, ritual, and abstraction. Through sculpture, drawing, painting, and writing, he explores how meaning is projected onto material, and how speculative objects and architectures can hold some form of meaning or belief without revealing their function. His works often recall the intimacy of mementoes or devotional artefacts, where the act of imbuing significance becomes central to their presence. Faceted gemstones, echoing the language of jewellery, serve as the focus of this projection, points where private sentiments meet public display. Grounded in symbolic form and spatial logic, Bell’s practice reflects an ongoing inquiry into the Sublime as a condition of awe, rupture, and metaphysical unease, constructing spaces and objects where meaning feels suspended, reverent, and charged with the unknown.

Artist-Initiated Projects at Pallas Projects/Studios is an open-submission, annual gallery programme of 8 x 3-week exhibitions taking place from January - December 2026. This unique programme of funded, artist-initiated projects selected via open call is highly accessible to artists, with a focus on early career, emerging artists and recent graduates. Projects are supplemented with artists' talks, texts, workshops or performances, and gallery visits by colleges and local schools.