John Kelleher (b. 2001, Dublin, Ireland) is a painter of oil-based abstractions whose conceptual weight is derived from their processual complexities. The artist’s deep consideration for surface materiality is derived from his background in furniture design, embodied by images methodically ‘uncovered’ through hundreds of layers of paint, or canvases stretched taut and lustrous with rabbit skin glue. The result is a practice which invokes the expressionist landscapes of Irish twentieth-century painting and the mark-making of the modernist greats, and one which foregrounds presence devoid of figuration; an evocation of human interiority through the act of art-making itself.
Kelleher graduated from the Royal College of Art, where he studied painting, in 2023, after studying at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. Recent exhibitions include: Panic Room, rooom service gallery, Paris, France (2025), Dining Room, rooom service gallery, Paris, France (2025), Time goes by so slowly, SET Kingston, London, UK (2024), Bedroom, rooom service gallery, Paris, France (2024), and The Road of Excess, Safehouse 2, London, UK (2023).