Niamh Cunningham

'Gingko Palace'  Sucrose Series limited print on paper 1/3, 100 x 70 cm, Niamh Cunningham, 2018.

---

Niamh Cunningham is a visual artist originating from Ireland and has been based in China for the past fifteen years. Her work is focused on ecological insights and linked to themes of collective transformation. Her primary work focuses on the socio ecological art practice the “Memory Palace of Tree Stories” which invites participation from a global public to create their own narratives on the natural world and trees. This practice was awarded public funding in 2023 by Carlow County Council and Creative Ireland to gather peoples' tree stories in the form of one minute videos, at the Carlow Garden Festival 2023. She also received support for her tree story gathering at the A4 residency in Chengdu October 2024. She is currently focusing on gathering tree stories from China throughout 2025 and later expanding this collection further afield. Her exhibition at XLY Moma Chengdu 'Memory Palace of Tree Stories - The Paintings' met with acclaim in May 2024 as part of the Chengdu – Europe Festival and most recently at Dong Yue Art Museum a duo exhibition with Prof Zhen Qinyan “The Story of Trees” in March 2025.

Apart from gathering tree stories, Cunningham works with paints, and employs mixed media and photographic processes in developing new techniques such as her “Sucrose Series”. She explores the space between the known and the unknown, of recognition and perception, and the connections with location and memory. Light and transparency are often signatures in her work.

In April 2024 she presented at TEDx Beixinqiao. She is a member of Visual Artists Ireland and a founding member of Haumea Ecoversity.

niamhcunningham.com memorypalaceoftreestories.com

'The Second Beech' Sucrose Series print on paper 1/3,  50 x 50 cm, Niamh Cunningham, 2018.

'Curved Path - Willows'  Sucrose Series print 100 x 70 cm, Niamh Cunningham, 2018. 

The sucrose series is my first attempt to articulate biosphere changes through process based art. There are so many feedback systems in the biosphere it is difficult to identify what is causing what. I consider the sucrose series a metaphor for that complexity.  After freshly printing on paper , sometimes I sew , sometimes I add colour before adding the hot sugar which lifts fragments from the surface of the paper into the mixture , this mixture dries and crystals form sometimes shifting the particles of ink, thus the process continues ,even after the creation event.

It is the process print that is the artwork as the print bears witness to the sugar crystallisation pushing small fragments of colour within the sugar mixture.