What’s on in Connaught

Daisy Chains || Data Trails expands on the recurrent theme in Ciara Tuite’s practice ”body memory’. In this exhibition she explores ‘old practices’ and ‘ancient rituals’ which are embedded in our DNA Modern technology can’t replace the act of mark-making, storytelling, dance etc. In our ever-evolving world, the artist uses painting, text and installation as a conduit to ask the question – how can ancient rituals and digital culture walk side by side to promote peace? What if stone skimming, and barefoot walking are a necessity rather than a novelty to thrive in todays world? What if for a moment we swapped the screen for the sky?

‘Even now there are still places where a thought might grow.‘ – Derek Mahon

I wrote the phrase ‘keep the burning world at bay’ in a notebook during a deep sense of uncertainty at the start of the global pandemic and partly as an answer to my young daughter’s worried question when her school closed – ‘Will it be like this forever?’ I didn’t know, bluffing I told her it would be back to ‘normal’ soon.

New works, new meditations from one of Ireland’s most outstanding still life artists. Trudie Mooney has the powerful effect of stopping and holding the viewer. Objects are still, the light they are washed in is still; all movement is stilled, giving pause, forcing us to look again at the world through offerings of sublime detail.

The Model is delighted to present a major solo exhibition with the artist Tinka Bechert, presenting a ten-year retrospective of her work. Based in the northwest of Ireland for over two decades, Bechert has become an integral part of the cultural landscape of the region. Over the past decade, Bechert’s practice has undergone a significant evolution – moving firmly from figurative painting to a more expansive and experimental abstraction. Her recent work incorporates textiles and sculptural forms, reflecting a deepening exploration of space, materiality, and formal language.

126 Artist-Run Gallery presents It Felt Like A Dream, a collection of work by Asha Murray. Her work combines experimental film, wool tufted objects, collage and sculpture to explore identity, consumerism and memory in everyday objects. The exhibition traces her progression to date. It opens Saturday April 4 at 6pm with a reception and runs until April 26. Open Wednesday to Sunday, 12–6pm.

SYNAESTHESIA is an immersive, Irish-language theatre experience that follows a single thread of thought as it weaves through music, painting, and light. Over the course of one hour, audiences are invited into a living, breathing canvas where ceremonial instruments are played live alongside synths, larger-than-life paintings unfold before your eyes, and interactive projections blur the boundary between electronic and organic creation.
SYNAESTHESIA gently draws you beyond the surface of the senses.
No Irish is required to attend. A full translation will be provided to every guest at the beginning of the show.

SYNAESTHESIA is an immersive, Irish-language theatre experience that follows a single thread of thought as it weaves through music, painting, and light. Over the course of one hour, audiences are invited into a living, breathing canvas where ceremonial instruments are played live alongside synths, larger-than-life paintings unfold before your eyes, and interactive projections blur the boundary between electronic and organic creation.
SYNAESTHESIA gently draws you beyond the surface of the senses.
No Irish is required to attend. A full translation will be provided to every guest at the beginning of the show.

Songs to the Siren.
The Model, Sligo | 24 January – 12 April 2026.
Curated by Hallahan & Welch.

Exhibition Opening: Sat. 24 January, 1 – 3pm.
1pm – Curators’ Tour.
2pm – Reception.

Songs to the Siren brings together works that dwell in ambiguity and emotion. Inspired by Brian O’Nolan’s veiled identity and Tim Buckley’s haunting song, the exhibition features artists including Joyce Pensato, William McKeown, Mark Leckey, Banksy, and Zanele Muholi. It invites visitors to linger with uncertainty, where feeling replaces resolution.

Pilgrim is a solo exhibition by Susan Mannion, an Irish artist and curator whose practice centres on enamelled metalwork and printmaking. In this body of work, Mannion interrogates the enduring human impulse to gravitate toward liminal waterscapes and sacred sites—spaces where narrative, ritual, and topography coalesce. Informed by her training as an archaeologist, Pilgrim traverses the material and metaphysical strata of the Irish waterscape, from the primordial bog pools and holy wells of Roscommon, along fluvial passages, to the Atlantic threshold at Westport in Clew Bay.
(Image: Water Energies, Enamel on steel wall panel 1m x 1m)

A Tenuous Line is a multimedia exhibition presented by Niamh McGuinne, a Dublin-based visual artist whose practice combines print, sculpture, film and installation. Her work investigates the formulations of middens, accumulations of discarded material, and historical rubbish heaps. There are 77 midden sites situated in Mayo, 18 of which are sheltered in Clew Bay, typically containing shells, bones and other such remnants of survival. These middens are read as sites of temporary occupation. In A Tenuous Line, the “line” invoked is neither cartographic nor fixed; rather, it is a line drawn around resources, around bodies, around access.

Galway based artist Heather Young has been creating artwork for over 15 years across multiple disciplines. “Unearthed” features a selection of original works and prints that helped shape her original style, allowing us a glimpse into the artist’s development in her first solo exhibition.

This includes key early works that grounded her attention to intricate details along with a passion for rich depth and contrasts. A playful and sometimes whimsical expression of nature developed over many years along with explorations of the entangled cycles of decay and growth.

FREE ADMISSION

Songs to the Siren.
The Model, Sligo | 24 January – 12 April 2026.
Curated by Hallahan & Welch.

Exhibition Opening: Sat. 24 January, 1 – 3pm.
1pm – Curators’ Tour.
2pm – Reception.

Songs to the Siren brings together works that dwell in ambiguity and emotion. Inspired by Brian O’Nolan’s veiled identity and Tim Buckley’s haunting song, the exhibition features artists including Joyce Pensato, William McKeown, Mark Leckey, Banksy, and Zanele Muholi. It invites visitors to linger with uncertainty, where feeling replaces resolution.

‘usual and generous ways’ presents works from artists working across a range of media, from Ireland and elsewhere, in which stone is not just a material to be shaped by the artist’s hand, but a subject-matter, object of inquiry, and an agent to be thought-with and thought-through.

Featuring: Richard Long, Barrie Cooke, Damien Hirst, Dorothy Cross, Seiha Kurosawa, David Beattie, Patrick Ireland/Brian O’Doherty, Patrick Hall, Anne Madden, Hilary Heron, Hamish Fulton.

Presented by Galway Arts Centre in partnership with the Irish Museum of Modern Art, curated by writer & poet Padraig Regan.

Map: GSNI

A Tenuous Line is a multimedia exhibition presented by Niamh McGuinne, a Dublin-based visual artist whose practice combines print, sculpture, film and installation. Her work investigates the formulations of middens, accumulations of discarded material, and historical rubbish heaps. There are 77 midden sites situated in Mayo, 18 of which are sheltered in Clew Bay, typically containing shells, bones and other such remnants of survival. These middens are read as sites of temporary occupation. In A Tenuous Line, the “line” invoked is neither cartographic nor fixed; rather, it is a line drawn around resources, around bodies, around access.

Pilgrim is a solo exhibition by Susan Mannion, an Irish artist and curator whose practice centres on enamelled metalwork and printmaking. In this body of work, Mannion interrogates the enduring human impulse to gravitate toward liminal waterscapes and sacred sites—spaces where narrative, ritual, and topography coalesce. Informed by her training as an archaeologist, Pilgrim traverses the material and metaphysical strata of the Irish waterscape, from the primordial bog pools and holy wells of Roscommon, along fluvial passages, to the Atlantic threshold at Westport in Clew Bay.
(Image: Water Energies, Enamel on steel wall panel 1m x 1m)

Exhibition continues from 06/03/2026.

The Living Ginger brings together a range of Jack Butler Yeats’s watercolours from 1895 to 1910, a formative period when his vivid sense of character and everyday life was emerging through dynamic, spirited compositions. The title comes from a phrase Yeats once used to describe the vitality he believed that all great painting should possess. That lively undercurrent gives these early works their enduring charge.

Exhibition continues from 07/03/2026.

Flight by Sacha Hutchinson opens at Daróg Wine Bar on 02 March, bringing a study of Atlantic seabirds to focus at a time when our coastal birdlife faces increasing pressure.
Based in Barna, Co. Galway, Sacha Hutchinson is a practising artist with a Bachelor of Arts in Art and Design (2010). Working primarily in gouache and oil, her practice explores nature’s vulnerability, with a particular focus on Ireland’s Atlantic seabirds. Alongside her visual work, she writes environmental poetry and has been published in several poetry journals and art anthologies. She is also a member of the Hare’s Corner Collective.

The Dock presents Soft Spot, an exhibition by Irish artist Helen O’Leary that foregrounds reuse, repair, and ecological thinking as generative artistic strategies.
Raised in rural Ireland in the 1960s and 70s, O’Leary’s formative ethos — “if you can’t make it, you can’t have it” — continues to inform her materially rigorous practice. Over decades, she has developed a distinctive formal language built from modest materials and unglamorous gestures. Her works occupy a dynamic space between painting and sculpture, blurring categorical boundaries while insisting on the physicality of their making.

Solas Art Gallery, located within The Island Theatre in Ballinamore, is delighted to announce that its 19th Annual Spring Group Exhibition will open at 7:30pm on Friday, the 20th of March. The exhibition features a diverse collection of work by both emerging and established artists, highlighting a wide range of styles and creative approaches. All are welcome and visitors can enjoy a curated selection of paintings in oils, acrylics, watercolours, embroidery, photography, poetry and mixed media spanning realism to abstraction.

Galway based artist Heather Young has been creating artwork for over 15 years across multiple disciplines. “Unearthed” features a selection of original works and prints that helped shape her original style, allowing us a glimpse into the artist’s development in her first solo exhibition.

This includes key early works that grounded her attention to intricate details along with a passion for rich depth and contrasts. A playful and sometimes whimsical expression of nature developed over many years along with explorations of the entangled cycles of decay and growth.

FREE ADMISSION