Tom Climent

Overview

A Cork born painter working primarily in abstraction, Tom Climent’s work is most recognisable through his subtle arrangement of colour and tonality. A graduate from Crawford College of Art and Design in 1994, he established himself early as an artist-to-be-watched with his sell-out graduate show causing a stir in Cork’s art world and going on to win the prestigious Victor Treacy Award and the Tony O’Malley Award. Since then he has continually evolved as painter, creating paintings which touch on both abstraction and representation while challenging the materiality and mobility of paint. His masterful use of plaster, sand and collage in his compositions result in subtle and refined textures, a suggestion of the tactility of the landscapes within.

Climent is a recipient of the Ballinglen Arts Foundation Fellowship 2016, Cork City Council Individual Artists Bursary Award 2014, Working Art Grant 2014, Tony O’Malley Travel Award, Victor Treacy Award and a Department of Foreign Affairs Travel Award. He has exhibited extensively throughout Ireland with solo shows in the Hunt Museum, Limerick, Fenton Gallery, Cork, Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin, GOMA Gallery of Modern Art, Waterford and the Luan Gallery, Athlone. He has taken part in group exhibitions in China, Australia, New York and London. His painting Eden was recently acquired for the permanent collection of The Crawford Gallery Cork. Climent's work is represented in public and corporate collections including The Crawford Gallery, the Office of Public Works, the Central Bank of Ireland, the National Treasury Management Agency of Ireland, University College Cork, University College Dublin, the National Concert Hall, Dublin, Smurfit Business School and AIB.

In 2025 Climent held a major exhibition of works at the CCI, Paris. A monograph of the artist was recently published with Gandon Editions and is currently available to purchase at the gallery or online HERE

Works