"The Rogue’s Gallery" Conor Walton
Main Gallery
28 August – 10 October 2026
Artists: Conor Walton (www.conorwalton.com, @conorwalton70)
The Rogue’s Gallery turns its attention to the human-made systems driving instability, and the ways power is staged, performed, and normalised. These portraits operate like contemporary history painting, using the language of classical figuration to confront a culture where influence is theatrical and “truth” is increasingly negotiable. In a year that repeatedly returns to what endures, and what collapses, Walton asks what we are choosing to preserve, and what we are willing to overlook.
An exhibition centred around a group of satirical portraits of the most powerful individuals
shaping (and destabilizing) our world order: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Vladimir Putin, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, with smaller pictures seamlessly blending weird fantasy with dystopian reality to explore our Post-Truth, pre-Apocalyptic existence.
Artist Biography
Conor Walton is a leading Irish artist and a painter of international renown. He has had twenty three solo exhibitions in Europe and America and participated in numerous museum
exhibitions. Walton has won awards for his work including the Gino De Agrò International Award (2022), the Ismail Lulani International Award (2019), ModPortrait 2017. He was shortlisted for the BP Portrait Award in 2005 and the Golden Fleece Award in 2011.
Walton was born in Ireland in 1970 and trained at NCAD in Dublin and under Charles Cecil in Florence, Italy. He holds a Masters Degree in Art History and Theory (awarded with Distinction) from the University of Essex. He lives and works in Wicklow, Ireland.
"I see myself as a figurative painter in the European tradition, attempting to maintain my craft at the highest level, using paint to explore issues of truth, meaning and value. All my paintings are attempted answers to the three questions in the title of Gauguin’s famous painting: ‘Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?’"
