Dublin City Council has officially announced the full programme for Culture Night Dublin 2025. The annual night time celebration of culture will take place on Friday, 19 September, with over 300 events in Dublin City.

Museums, galleries, cathedrals, artist studios, libraries, parks, historic landmarks, government buildings, theatres, music venues, community centres, and more will open their doors to the public as the city comes alive with exhilarating live acts, specially curated tours, hands-on workshops, pop-up performances, and many more bespoke one-night-only events.

This year’s outdoor programme features specially selected and commissioned acts and events designed to transform the city centre into a vibrant, open-air stage.

Meeting House Square will kick off with a Family Fun Set Dancing session with live music led by a sean nós dancer, fiddler, and expert set dancing instructor. Favour Odusola will be fusing Irish and Nigerian dance into a performance of rhythm, colour, and movement, while Lisa Murray (“Gaeilgeoir Swift”) delivers bilingual pop anthems that put the Irish language centre stage. Rounding out the evening, soul-pop star Calum Agne and cinematic post-rock band Earthmover will be bending genres to deliver an unforgettable night of ground-breaking tunes.

At Wood Quay Amphitheatre, Libyan-Irish artist Farah Elle presents lush arrangements of North African melodies, before The Comedy Cellar brings some of the country’s finest comedians to the stage for some razor-sharp stand-up. Central Plaza features Peru Fusion’s vibrant traditional dances and a hands-on workshop, followed by sparkling DJ sets and ultimate disco vibes. Over on Capel Street, Echo Exchange celebrates Ireland’s underground music scene with a genre-diverse lineup.

O’Connell Street will spring to life as actors embody Daniel O’Connell and Jim Larkin, while Meet Me Under the Clock recreates the city’s bandstand tradition with live music and dancing. At Diamond Park, enjoy magical screenings of Cartoon Saloon’s Oscar-nominated Song of the Sea and the nostalgic coming-of-age musical Sing Street, plus a riotous climate-action cabaret from the Green Grannies. Meanwhile, Shifting Stages offers raw theatre on motherhood, while The Poetry’s Dead Podcast goes live with craic, spoken word, and music at The Lab.

Speaking at the programme launch, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Councillor Ray McAdam, invited audiences to join the celebrations: “Join us on September 19th for the art party of the year as Culture Night celebrates its 20th year in the capital. Culture Night offers a chance for people to explore the city’s hidden gems, unleash your creativity and become a tourist in your own town. It’s wonderful to see that O’Connell Street will be activated with events for the first time, in the year of O’Connell’s 250th anniversary, a fitting tribute to our most famous former Lord Mayor”.

This year’s edition features over 250 venues across Dublin City, from Finglas to Clontarf to Ranelagh to Terenure to Inchicore, bringing every corner of the capital to life. Follow the link below to explore the full programme.

Jason McCarthy’s personal ode to Drogheda, his hometown, encompasses everyday urban spaces, housing, streets, forgotten corners,
dereliction, the post-industrial, and the edge lands where the urban gradually gives way to the rural and the ebb and flow of the
majestic river Boyne.

McCarthy’s striking portraits are of the people who inhabit these places. All are looking directly at the camera and hence at the
viewer, each person confident in their body language, presentation, and individuality.

Hometown speaks of rootedness, belonging, and connection. Of being shaped by a place and also being intrinsic to shaping it.
McCarthy’s photographs are imbued with insight, quietness, and stillness that give a particular perspective on his hometown and
encourage us to look more deeply at our own home places.

An exclusive retrospective exhibition celebrating the life’s work of one of Ireland’s most distinctive and provocative artists Graham Knuttel will take place in the Minerva Suite at The RDS, Dublin on 19th – 21st September 2025.

Knuttel died at the age of 69 in 2023. He was one of the best known contemporary Irish artists, found in public and private collections around the world. His work captured the contradictions of modern life through his vivid, stylised works. His bold use of colour and sharp, angular figures became synonymous with the boom years of the Celtic Tiger, portraying shady characters, gangsters, and sultry women in a way that exposed the undercurrents of greed and power beneath the surface.

Known internationally, Knuttel’s work attracted collectors such as Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro and Frank Sinatra, in addition to attracting numerous portrait commissions for renowned figures such as Christy Moore and John B. Keane, cementing his place as a unique observer of contemporary society.

The exhibition will showcase a lifetime of work from his illustrious career, including iconic paintings, sculptures crafted from bronze, silver and wood, the Knuttel Linley collaborative chess set and tapestries that earned him international recognition. This must-see event offers art enthusiasts a unique opportunity to witness the evolution of Knuttel’s artistic vision and immerse themselves with Knuttel’s unmistakable blend of vivid colour, storytelling, and intricate character studies. In addition, the show will feature two of his very last works – a sculpture and painting he had just completed before his unexpected death on a trip to Spain.

One of Knuttel’s most striking creations was the elaborate chess set that he made in collaboration with the renowned furniture designer and manufacturer David Linley, which will take centre piece of the Retrospective Exhibition.

Muine Bheag Arts is delighted to present Where the Field Fails to Hold, an exhibition by Cian Lawler.

Where the Field Fails to Hold is a series of photographic interventions which reflect on the rhythms of everyday life in a small town. The photographs document casual encounters with friends, familiar places and often overlooked details of Muine Bheag. Lawler began photographing his daily life in 2019 as a way to explore the emotional tether to his hometown.

The exhibition launches at Bagenalstown Community Garden at 6pm on 19th Sept as part of Culture Night and continues until 28th Sept.

Evolving Landscapes is a critical reflection on the urgent need for climate action in the face of escalating ecological instability. As biodiversity declines and environmental thresholds are crossed, artistic practices increasingly turn to embodied, site-responsive methods that engage directly with damaged ecosystems and communities on the frontlines of change.

This exhibition, curated by Valeria Ceregini, brings together the work of Louis Haugh, Tadhg Kinsella, and Laura Skehan.
Evolving Landscapes is commissioned by Fingal County Council for Culture Night 2025.

For Culture Night join us for a panel discussion with artist Kate Fahey, curator Rachel Botha, and local historian Ann Tierney to expand on the exhibition’s concept, research and process. ‘beyond, beneath, Beside’ is a solo exhibition by artist Kate Fahey, it explores the context of the Tea Houses and their proximity to the River Nore. The exhibition investigates the gallery site and locale, including Talbot’s Inch model arts and crafts village, the former Greenvale Woolen Mills, and engaged with Kilkenny’s rich subterranean, cultural and industrial history associated with the river.

“Taking Shape” is the second group exhibition from the Sow’s Ear Collective, a gathering of multidisciplinary artists working across painting, sculpting, textile, and more.

Following the inaugural exhibition (“Holding Space”), “Taking Shape” invites audiences into a space of becoming – where ideas crystallise, edges emerge, and where the mess of process begins to resolve into something legible, tangible, or provocatively unresolved. Each piece in the exhibition carries the beauty of artists working in motion, and together the works speak of growth.

“Daughters of Gold & Dust”.
Celebrating the strength and perseverance of women.

Daughters of Gold & Dust brings together oil and collage portraits that reflect resilience, memory, and the stories that shape us.
Through layers of paint and collage, the works show both strength and fragility, capturing how life’s experiences leave their mark.
Running from 20th of September through to November.
A Solo Exhibition.

Location: The Gallery at The Complex, 21 Arran Street East, Dublin 7, D07YY97
Preview: 19 Sept, 6-8 pm
Exhibition Run: 20 Sept – 3 Oct
Hours: 10am-5pm Mon-Fri, 12-5pm Sat
Tickets: Free entry, no booking required

Residues of The Garden of Eden at The Complex brings together the work of Joanne Reid and Ben Weir, curated by Mark O’Gorman and Debi Paul. Mark and Debi have been working closely on the exhibition since they proposed the collaboration in 2022, whereupon the artists became bound through their instinctive conversations. As it progressed, the contrast in scale between the artist’s work, along with a shared sensitivity and a refined sculptural language, through the use of industrial materials such as steel, wood, and concrete, made the connection apparent.

A central point of dialogue that emerged between the artists in relation to The Complex site and its surrounding environment gravitated towards a focal point that was the Garden of Eden – not only the biblical paradise described in the Book of Genesis, but also the (later inspired) formal walled gardens of aristocratic estates. The Garden of Eden has acted as a central node from which other enquiries branched out, among them the Victorian Fruit and Vegetable Market, currently under renovation and adjacent to The Complex in Smithfield, with its richly ornate terracotta castings of lobsters, turnips, and other produce, sequenced uniformly across its exterior. It also embraced the materials and packaging methods used daily by the vendors with their cardboard boxes filled with vegetables, arranged on the roadside, stacked on pallets and wrapped in plastic, displaying an unintentional harmony of form, colour, and gesture.

As conversations between the artists and curators developed, the concept of the wall in relation to the garden became foundational, raising the notion of designed boundaries that interrogate tensions between inside and outside, wild and tamed, safety and danger, class structures, and the demarcation of land and communities. The artist’s research led them to another local site of discovery, St. Mary’s Abbey, founded in 1139 and once one of the largest and most significant medieval monasteries in Ireland. Ben came across a map illustrating the historic parish boundary of St. Mary’s and revealed that whilst the Abbey ceased to function as such after the dissolution of the monasteries in 1541, the area north of the Liffey continued to be served by St. Michan’s. It was not until 1698 that St. Mary’s parish was formally established, separating it from St. Michan’s, the boundary of which appears to cut diagonally through the exhibition space at The Complex, creating yet another layer of spatial and historical division which will inform Ben’s installation.

According to Joanne’s research, it was rumoured that an Abbot once covered the leaf mouldings on the ceiling of the Abbey’s Chapter House to prevent the monks working there from becoming distracted, or ultimately seduced by the beauty of nature. This detail resonates with discussions around walled gardens, the Garden of Eden, and the idea of temptation. Joanne references Albrecht Dürer’s Adam and Eve as a key image in her research, in which the biblical figures are shown with fig leaves covering their genitals, symbolising their poignant shame; and at the same time, the branch depicted possesses a certain delicacy. From the fig leaf to the reverent cauliflower leaf, and how it is trimmed for wholesale distribution, to the leaf patterns found on recently unearthed medieval tiles from St Mary’s Abbey, the leaf continues to be a unifying motif in Joanne’s work for the exhibition.

As the exhibition approaches, playful conversations and formative site visits have taken place at locations such as The Wonderful Barn, Fire Station Artists’ Studios, the Leixlip Spa, St. Mary’s Abbey, Chapter House and various construction/archaeological sites surrounding The Complex. Boundary walls were scaled or peeked over as they encouraged each other to discover. Residues from different periods of the Gallery site’s history proliferate through their conversations, calling to attention other sites of interest and moments in art history. These outings have informed a flourishing dialogue and a relationship between the artists and curators, laying lines between and marking out in increments their thoughts and speculations.

Luan Gallery presents SYSTEM ARMING, a group exhibition featuring sculpture, film, installation, and painting works exploring the complex ways digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and transhumanism intersect with contemporary power structures.
Exhibiting artists: Nadia J. Armstrong, Kennedy Browne, Aisling Phelan, Colin Martin- Curated by Aoife Banks.
Official opening on Saturday, 20 September at 2pm with guest speaker Dr Francis Halsall.
All are welcome to attend.

Exhibition continues to Sunday 16 November.

Supported by The Arts Council

Paint the Day Away at Russborough House! Bring your easel, sketchbook or canvas (stamped on arrival) and enjoy a day of plein air painting among gardens, statuary, and mountain views. Learn from top Irish artists with demos and Q&As, enter competitions, and exhibit or sell your work in a pop-up show. Prizes include art materials, vouchers, and courses. Refreshments available from Gather & Gather café, or bring a picnic. Rain or shine, dress for the weather and bring your favourite materials!

– Opening Times: Thursday 7 August to Friday 19 September, 11.30am to 5.30pm
– Open daily for Kilkenny Arts Festival, then Thursday to Saturday weekly

‘beyond, beneath, Beside’ explores the site of the Tea Houses and their proximity to the River Nore and its nearby tributary the River Breaghagh. During her residency, artist Kate Fahey investigated the locale, including Talbot’s Inch model arts and crafts village, the former Greenvale Woollen Mills, and engaged with the rich subterranean, cultural and industrial history associated with the rivers, including the great flood in 1947.

Drawing on materials, forms and motifs relevant to the historical arts and crafts revival in Kilkenny, the installation positions the neighbouring River Breaghagh (translates as the deceitful river) as a swirling, twisting and uneasy presence, a trickster figure, liable to rise and surge unpredictably. Situating tactile encounters with the material world at the centre of this inquiry, the exhibition poetically echoes a sense of networked and interconnected resonances across time and space, situated beyond, beneath and beside the riverbank.

Curated by Rachel Botha.
Design by Emmet Brown.

Kate Fahey is an artist based between Kilkenny and London, working with sound, sculpture, moving image, print and installation. She has shown her work at spaces including the ICA London, VISUAL Carlow, the Bluecoat Liverpool, the CCArt Andratx, Arti et Amicitiae Amsterdam and Pallas Projects Dublin. She received an MA in Fine Art Print at the Royal College of Art, London and completed a practice-based PhD at the University of the Arts London in 2020. She is a senior lecturer in Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University.

The Tea Houses are situated by the River Nore in Kilkenny city centre and have been acquired by Kilkenny Arts Office to host an art programme that encourages a sense of community and active citizenship.

Kindly supported by Kilkenny Arts Office, Kilkenny County Council, ArtLinks and Arts Council, Ireland.

Alan Butler
Mary FitzGerald
Damien Flood
Mark Joyce
Sorcha McNamara
Bridget Riley
Oisín Tozer

Exhibition dates : 1 August – 19 September 2025
Opening reception : Thursday 31 July 2025 5-8 pm

Earthly Delights is in the title of Hieronymous Bosch’s early 16th Century triptych The Garden of Eathly Delights. This painting charts the Creation, the Birth and Fall of man and woman. It was painted in The Netherlands in the 1490s or early 1500s. It is currently in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. It has captivated audiences and artists since that time, including some Irish artists and one or two in this show.

The Garden theme is also continued in Green On Red Gallery’s summer Earthly Delights exhibition looking at artists whose work looks at life and death and society, not to mention a world in crisis.

Exhibition continues from the 14th of August to the 19th of September 2025

Featuring three 5.4m towers from discarded wardrobes—antique mahogany to mid-20th-century chipboard. Once bedroom sentinels, they mirror human scale amid capitalist decay & ecological loss. Charred, their graphite sheen reveals pre-industrial carbon, a silvery breath from past forests, hinting at immortality. From cave charcoal to quantum tech, this graphite, a communication tool, sparks hope via cross-disciplinary dialogue against the ecological abyss. With eco-gothic tones—from toppled dolmens to Space Odyssey monoliths—they evoke a haunting legacy of neglect through architectural resonance.

“Taking Shape” is the second group exhibition from the Sow’s Ear Collective, a gathering of multidisciplinary artists working across painting, sculpting, textile, and more.

Following the inaugural exhibition (“Holding Space”), “Taking Shape” invites audiences into a space of becoming – where ideas crystallise, edges emerge, and where the mess of process begins to resolve into something legible, tangible, or provocatively unresolved. Each piece in the exhibition carries the beauty of artists working in motion, and together the works speak of growth.

For Culture Night join us for a panel discussion with artist Kate Fahey, curator Rachel Botha, and local historian Ann Tierney to expand on the exhibition’s concept, research and process. ‘beyond, beneath, Beside’ is a solo exhibition by artist Kate Fahey, it explores the context of the Tea Houses and their proximity to the River Nore. The exhibition investigates the gallery site and locale, including Talbot’s Inch model arts and crafts village, the former Greenvale Woolen Mills, and engaged with Kilkenny’s rich subterranean, cultural and industrial history associated with the river.

Dublin City Council has officially announced the full programme for Culture Night Dublin 2025. The annual night time celebration of culture will take place on Friday, 19 September, with over 300 events in Dublin City.

Museums, galleries, cathedrals, artist studios, libraries, parks, historic landmarks, government buildings, theatres, music venues, community centres, and more will open their doors to the public as the city comes alive with exhilarating live acts, specially curated tours, hands-on workshops, pop-up performances, and many more bespoke one-night-only events.

This year’s outdoor programme features specially selected and commissioned acts and events designed to transform the city centre into a vibrant, open-air stage.

Meeting House Square will kick off with a Family Fun Set Dancing session with live music led by a sean nós dancer, fiddler, and expert set dancing instructor. Favour Odusola will be fusing Irish and Nigerian dance into a performance of rhythm, colour, and movement, while Lisa Murray (“Gaeilgeoir Swift”) delivers bilingual pop anthems that put the Irish language centre stage. Rounding out the evening, soul-pop star Calum Agne and cinematic post-rock band Earthmover will be bending genres to deliver an unforgettable night of ground-breaking tunes.

At Wood Quay Amphitheatre, Libyan-Irish artist Farah Elle presents lush arrangements of North African melodies, before The Comedy Cellar brings some of the country’s finest comedians to the stage for some razor-sharp stand-up. Central Plaza features Peru Fusion’s vibrant traditional dances and a hands-on workshop, followed by sparkling DJ sets and ultimate disco vibes. Over on Capel Street, Echo Exchange celebrates Ireland’s underground music scene with a genre-diverse lineup.

O’Connell Street will spring to life as actors embody Daniel O’Connell and Jim Larkin, while Meet Me Under the Clock recreates the city’s bandstand tradition with live music and dancing. At Diamond Park, enjoy magical screenings of Cartoon Saloon’s Oscar-nominated Song of the Sea and the nostalgic coming-of-age musical Sing Street, plus a riotous climate-action cabaret from the Green Grannies. Meanwhile, Shifting Stages offers raw theatre on motherhood, while The Poetry’s Dead Podcast goes live with craic, spoken word, and music at The Lab.

Speaking at the programme launch, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Councillor Ray McAdam, invited audiences to join the celebrations: “Join us on September 19th for the art party of the year as Culture Night celebrates its 20th year in the capital. Culture Night offers a chance for people to explore the city’s hidden gems, unleash your creativity and become a tourist in your own town. It’s wonderful to see that O’Connell Street will be activated with events for the first time, in the year of O’Connell’s 250th anniversary, a fitting tribute to our most famous former Lord Mayor”.

This year’s edition features over 250 venues across Dublin City, from Finglas to Clontarf to Ranelagh to Terenure to Inchicore, bringing every corner of the capital to life. Follow the link below to explore the full programme.

To be Opened by Niamh Flanagan, Artist, Master Printer and Program Coordinator at Graphic Studio Dublin
On Wednesday 11th June 2025 at 7pm

Navigating Space is a solo exhibition by Maria Atanacković. Bringing together works on paper, wood, and linen, the exhibition explores the construction of space through assemblage and printmaking.

Atanacković’s practice is grounded in the process of breaking down and rebuilding form, using geometric shapes, layering, and composition to investigate the balance between structure and spontaneity.

This new body of work reflects her ongoing exploration of spatial relationships. Through bold, graphic elements and carefully considered arrangements, she creates abstract compositions that echo the ways we navigate our surroundings – both physically and emotionally. Some works have a precise, architectural quality, while others evolve through a more intuitive process, where forms emerge, shift, and settle into place.

Atanacković’s interest in space extends beyond the visible, delving into the underlying frameworks that shape our sense of place and belonging. She is particularly drawn to the tension between familiarity and displacement, and how we create connections within unfamiliar environments. Navigating Space considers these ideas through material and form, inviting the viewer to engage with the work as a process of movement and discovery.

Navigating Space by Maria Atanacković will be accompanied by a programme of engagement for young people, including a response space in our First Floor Gallery.

Exhibition continues 15th August – 20th September 2025. 
Mary Cullen-Kelly presents Carousel.
15th August – 20th September at Dunamaise Arts Centre.
Free to visit during opening hours, and 1 hour prior events (Tues to Sat, 1pm to 5pm).

Mary Cullen Kelly likes to time travel using paint, print and collage. Her colourful and detailed images can feel all at once familiar and strange. She creates moments and places that may or may not have existed. She is interested in and has studied the experience of Flow Theory in relation to art making.

Mary was awarded this solo exhibition as a prize from our Open Submission Show 2024 by Guest Selector Vera Klute, RHA.

About the Artist
Mary is an artist from Dublin who lives in Carlow. She has a degree in Fine Art Print from NCAD and an MSc in Disability Studies from UCD, which focussed on the experience of engagement in arts activities, for which she won the Eunice Kennedy Shriver medal. She has previously exhibited in VISUAL Carlow and extensively in group and open submission shows, including the RHA Annual. Mary has been involved in community arts in Dublin and Carlow. See more on www.marycullenkelly.com

The exhibition title references the TV series MadMen; there the ‘carousel’ is a Kodak slide projector that ‘moves the viewer forwards and backwards’ in time.
This series of paintings, prints and objects seek to describe a world that can feel familiar and strange all at the same time. Things are always changing. The artist draws on science fiction movies from the 50s and 60s. Colourful paintings of domestic and ‘small town’ settings draw us in with a whiff of nostalgia, a sense of the familiar which is subverted as things are not quite as expected. Photopolymer prints and made objects offer clues that the world we are in has been altered. Flora and other items have appeared nearby. Questions are posed but not answered. The world has changed and we are not quite sure where we are.

Exhibition continues from the 15th of August to the 20th of September 2025

The exhibition title references the TV series Mad Men; there the ‘carousel’ is a Kodak slide projector that in a sense moves the viewer forwards and backwards in time.

This series of paintings, prints and objects seek to describe a world that can feel familiar and strange all at the same time. Things are always changing. The artist draws on science fiction movies from the 50s and 60s. Colourful paintings of domestic and ‘small town’ settings draw us in with a whiff of nostalgia, a sense of the familiar which is subverted as things are not quite as expected. Photopolymer prints and made objects offer clues that the world we are in has been altered. Flora and other items have appeared nearby. Questions are posed but not answered. The world has changed and we are not quite sure where we are.

Luan Gallery presents SYSTEM ARMING, a group exhibition featuring sculpture, film, installation, and painting works exploring the complex ways digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and transhumanism intersect with contemporary power structures.
Exhibiting artists: Nadia J. Armstrong, Kennedy Browne, Aisling Phelan, Colin Martin- Curated by Aoife Banks.
Official opening on Saturday, 20 September at 2pm with guest speaker Dr Francis Halsall.
All are welcome to attend.

Exhibition continues to Sunday 16 November.

Supported by The Arts Council

“Daughters of Gold & Dust”.
Celebrating the strength and perseverance of women.

Daughters of Gold & Dust brings together oil and collage portraits that reflect resilience, memory, and the stories that shape us.
Through layers of paint and collage, the works show both strength and fragility, capturing how life’s experiences leave their mark.
Running from 20th of September through to November.
A Solo Exhibition.

An ambitious new group exhibition, Staying with the Trouble, inspired by author and philosopher Donna Haraway’s seminal work of the same name, opens at IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) on Friday 2 May 2025. The exhibition features over 40 Irish and Ireland-based artists whose diverse practices explore urgent themes of our time.

Pushing against social norms, Staying with the Trouble challenges us and attempts to make sense of the present, questioning interspecies relationships, ideas of transformation, and renewal. The exhibition challenges human-centric narratives, advocating for a multi-species/multi-kin perspective through sculpture, film, painting, installation and performance.

The exhibition follows Haraway’s propositions such as “Making Kin”, “Composting” and “Sowing Worlds”, inviting visitors to rethink their connections with humans, animals, and ecosystems. Other propositions include “Critters”, emphasising the agency of non-human life, while “Techno-Apocalypse” critiques dystopian views on technology, proposing a more nuanced, interconnected future.
Commenting on the exhibition Mary Cremin, Head of Programming, IMMA, said; “Staying with the Trouble is a call to rethink, reshape our views — to stay present in complexity, to unlearn human-centric ways of seeing, and to lean into the radical potential of kinship across species, materials, and worlds. This exhibition is both a provocation and an invitation — to reimagine our place in a shared, entangled future.”
There will be a screening programme of film and moving image works as part of Living Canvas at IMMA, running throughout May to September.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a live performance series on Saturday 26 July 2025.

Artists featured in the exhibition include Farouk858, Kian Benson Bailes, George Bolster, Renèe Helèna Browne, Myrid Carten, Elizabeth Cope, Redd Ekks, Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Andy Fitz, Laura Fitzgerald, Marie Foley, Paddy Graham, Aoibheann Greenan, Kerry Guinan, Austin Hearne, Atsushi Kaga, Michael Kane, Sam Keogh, Caoimhe Kilfeather, Diaa Langan, Áine Mac Giolla Bhríde, Marielle MacLeman, Alan Magee, Christopher Mahon, Michelle Malone, Colin Martin, Maria McKinney, Bea McMahon, Thaís Muniz, Bridget O’Gorman, Venus Patel, Samir Mahmood, Alice Rekab, Eoghan Ryan, Jacqui Shelton, Sonia Shiel, Katie Watchorn, Luke van Gelderen, amongst others.

Image credit: Venus Patel, ‘Still from Daisy: Prophet of the Apocalypse’ (2023). Courtesy of the Artist

Opening reception:
Thursday 31 July, 6pm

‘Faigh Amach’ is an initiative by Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (TBG+S) in partnership with Culture Ireland and Southwark Park Galleries (SPG), London, to support an artist in presenting their first solo exhibition outside Ireland.

Roughly translating as ‘discover’, ‘Faigh Amach’ takes place as a group exhibition at TBG+S in Summer 2025, bringing together three artists selected through an open call process in 2024: Ella Bertilsson, Kathy Tynan, Emily Waszak. One of the three exhibiting artists will be invited to present their first international solo exhibition at SPG Lake Gallery in Spring 2026. During the planning and duration of ‘Faigh Amach’, SPG Director Judith Carlton and Deputy Director Charlotte Baker will conduct in-person and online studio visits with the three artists, as well as visiting the exhibition at TBG+S before making the selection for their programme.

Ella Bertilsson uses images and materials related to pop culture and the aesthetics of nostalgia to evoke a shared sense of memory and place. Her installations, which often incorporate film and performance, use the visual language of magical realism and absurdism to conjure darkly humorous and dreamlike sensory environments. The clash of bizarreness and naivety reflects the impact of anxiety and precarity in everyday life. Bertilsson’s installation for ‘Faigh Amach’ creates a new encounter with a recent film work, ‘A PEANUT WORM’S DREAM’, as viewers nestle into an immersive interior space behind a mountain scene of a photographic backdrop. Now emerging from the film itself, some of its characters – a fish, and a goat/deer – begin to populate their real-world surroundings outside of the confines of the film’s storage unit setting.

Kathy Tynan’s paintings of familiar cityscapes and domestic scenes illuminate moments of affection, intimacy and curiosity. Rather than focussing her gaze on monumental landmarks, Tynan instead attributes value to that which is otherwise overlooked. Her semi-autobiographical subjects include her own family and friends but speak more broadly to shared enthusiasms, experiences of care, community, and relationships. Tynan’s group of recent paintings in the exhibition collate a number of personal scenes from memory and family photographs. Patterned duvets and pyjamas conflate timelines between the artist’s own childhood and her experience as a mother with a young son. The sequence of paintings appear as a panorama of cinematic flashbacks.

Emily Waszak’s textile and assemblage works are informed by rituals of her Japanese cultural heritage, experiences of grief and the landscape of her home in Donegal. Using both ancient and contemporary weaving techniques, alongside the collection and display of found materials and other hand-made objects, Waszak combines processes that transcend time and place to find meaning in loss and understand how to access otherworldliness. Waszak has produced several large-scale woven works for the exhibition using a combination of discarded waste textiles gathered from industrial sites in Dublin, and fragments of fabric with deep personal significance. The textiles loom above a group of clay vessels holding ceremonial objects such as animal bones, which can be used as shakers in a form of incantation to connect with the spirit world.

Ella Bertilsson was born in Umeå, Sweden, and works in Dublin and Kilkenny. Her recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include The Horse, Dublin (2025); Ballina Art Centre (2024); The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon (2023); The Complex, Dublin (2022).

Kathy Tynan was born and works in Dublin. Her recent solo exhibitions include Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin (2024); Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise (2022); Highlanes Gallery (with Andrew Vickery), Drogheda (2020); The LAB, Dublin (2019).

Emily Waszak was born in North Carolina, United States, and works between Dublin and Donegal. Her recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny (2026); Pallas Projects, Dublin (2024); TU Dublin (2023).

Southwark Park Galleries is an interdisciplinary arts organisation in South East London. Through a locally relevant and internationally significant programme of exhibitions, performances and public engagement, their mission is to connect people using the intersection of art, nature and culture to facilitate meaning and wellbeing across communities. Established in 1984, they have a thriving reputation as a test site for experimental practice by commissioning artists at a critical stage to make their most ambitious work for exhibition.

An exclusive retrospective exhibition celebrating the life’s work of one of Ireland’s most distinctive and provocative artists Graham Knuttel will take place in the Minerva Suite at The RDS, Dublin on 19th – 21st September 2025.

Knuttel died at the age of 69 in 2023. He was one of the best known contemporary Irish artists, found in public and private collections around the world. His work captured the contradictions of modern life through his vivid, stylised works. His bold use of colour and sharp, angular figures became synonymous with the boom years of the Celtic Tiger, portraying shady characters, gangsters, and sultry women in a way that exposed the undercurrents of greed and power beneath the surface.

Known internationally, Knuttel’s work attracted collectors such as Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro and Frank Sinatra, in addition to attracting numerous portrait commissions for renowned figures such as Christy Moore and John B. Keane, cementing his place as a unique observer of contemporary society.

The exhibition will showcase a lifetime of work from his illustrious career, including iconic paintings, sculptures crafted from bronze, silver and wood, the Knuttel Linley collaborative chess set and tapestries that earned him international recognition. This must-see event offers art enthusiasts a unique opportunity to witness the evolution of Knuttel’s artistic vision and immerse themselves with Knuttel’s unmistakable blend of vivid colour, storytelling, and intricate character studies. In addition, the show will feature two of his very last works – a sculpture and painting he had just completed before his unexpected death on a trip to Spain.

One of Knuttel’s most striking creations was the elaborate chess set that he made in collaboration with the renowned furniture designer and manufacturer David Linley, which will take centre piece of the Retrospective Exhibition.

A Cage Called Family
A Solo Exhibition by Andrej Getman
Curated by Dino Notaro

A raw and unflinching look at growing up queer in a home that doesn’t always accept you. These paintings reveal the tension between family ties and selfhood, how love can feel conditional, how the place meant to protect can become a cage. Each work tells a story of confinement stretching from childhood into adulthood, speaking to hidden wounds, quiet acts of courage, and the strength it takes to live openly.

Official Opening: Thu 11 Sept, 6 – 8 pm

Dates: 11 – 21 September
Opening Hours: Tue – Sun, 10:30 – 5:30

Paint the Day Away at Russborough House! Bring your easel, sketchbook or canvas (stamped on arrival) and enjoy a day of plein air painting among gardens, statuary, and mountain views. Learn from top Irish artists with demos and Q&As, enter competitions, and exhibit or sell your work in a pop-up show. Prizes include art materials, vouchers, and courses. Refreshments available from Gather & Gather café, or bring a picnic. Rain or shine, dress for the weather and bring your favourite materials!

Curated by Zeda the Architect, this exhibition explores memory, identity, and belonging through a contemporary portrait of Ireland.

Featuring artists from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, it brings together painting, photography, storytelling, sound, and object-based installation.

Each contribution offers a fragment of lived experience, revealing an Éire that is intimate, layered, and evolving. Moving through personal memory and cultural symbolism, the works reframe Ireland not as a fixed identity, but as a shared, shifting narrative shaped by migration, joy, loss, community, and imagination.

It offers a space to remember, to reclaim, and to reimagine. Visitors are invited to engage with the past, the present, and what’s still becoming. This is both a love letter and a challenge. What does Ireland look like when seen by all of us?

A Portrait of Éire is a free exhibition open to everyone, running from Thurs 18th Sept – Sun 21st Sept.

Exhibition opening hours:

Thurs Opening Night: 6pm – 10pm
Fri Culture Night: 9am – 10pm
Sat: 9am – 1pm
Sun: 10am – 12pm & 4pm – 6pm

Zeda the Architect aka Oyindamola Animashaun is a Dublin-based curator, visual artist, and stylist working at the intersection of fashion, storytelling, and culture. Originally from Abeokuta, Nigeria, she has developed a multidisciplinary practice that bridges creativity, community, and sustainability.

Zeda is the founder of platforms such as THE ART OF STYLING and ZEDA AND
FRIENDS, both dedicated to celebrating Irishness, design, and collective experiences through fashion, storytelling, and new ways of gathering. Her work champions sustainable approaches to fashion and creativity, aligning with a broader commitment to reimagining how we engage with materials, culture, and each other.

Over her career, Zeda has worked on projects, shoots, fashion shows, and music videos for artists, charities, brands, and creative collectives. She was formerly Fashion Editor at VIP Publishing, producing covers, features, editorials, and shoots across Stellar, VIP, and TV NOW Magazine, and has been tapped for styling by several notable Irish celebrities and artists.

At the heart of her practice is a desire to create work that would have made her Black and Irish 13-year-old self feel seen and centering narratives that are inclusive, sustainable, and reflective of diverse lived experiences.

Festival continues from the 6th of September to the 21st of September 2025

Dublin Fringe Festival is a curated, multidisciplinary arts festival and a year-round artist support organisation. We create a framework for artistic risk, offering opportunities for artists to challenge and invigorate their practice, and extend the possibilities of what art can be. We seek out and present contemporary, playful and provocative new work made by Irish and international artists of vision in an annual celebration all over the city.

From form-busting theatre productions, electric dance performance, immersive installations to epic party nights out, every event is curated to ignite your mind and leave an indelible mark on your soul.

Dublin Fringe Festival 2025 takes place from Saturday 6 – Sunday 21 September 2025. 

At the End of the Day: New Paintings

Some memories resonate over and over and become part of our identity. Often they are just below the surface, on the border of dream and real life. Carol Hodder’s new work continues to mine this in-between state that sometimes leads to change and transformation.

Hodder is haunted by water. Early memories of being in a small boat on the lake with her father anchor her exploration of water, shoreline and edges. Her paintings often contain a sense of ambiguous internal weather, where ideas and experiences brood behind the surface of human experience.

Closing Launch on Wednesday 24th September 7pm.
This is a new body of work that merges abstract ink landscapes with darkroom experimentation. Moving Mountains includes chemigrams, chemograms, and salt etching pieces, created using resists and natural plant-based chemistry. These works engage with the local Irish landscape in a poetic, intuitive, and materially sensitive way. Through her practice, Greta offers a counter-narrative to the pace and noise of contemporary life inviting viewers to embrace the unknown, slow down, reconnect with the natural world, and find presence in the in-between.
No Booking Required

Pallas Projects/Studios are pleased to present Kathryn Maguire—Material Acts, the sixth exhibition of our 2025 Artist-Initiated Projects programme.

A sculptural re-mapping of sacred and ritual geologies.

Maguire’s work examines the ritual and magical possibilities of minerals as deeply embedded alternatives to the comparatively recent regard for minerals as purely extractable commodity.

Red stain oozes out of the cave walls and dries. This substance, Ochre, a ferrous rock, when ground into a powder and mixed with water, saliva, or urine, creates an impressive substance for use on the body or other surfaces. The relationship with minerals began possibly 300,000 years ago. Some of the ochres shimmered as mica or pyrite may have been present. People travelled far and wide, trading the potent minerals for ritual, magic, and storytelling purposes. The material had meaning and was valued. ‘Ochre altered our relationship with the earth. The dead rock underfoot yielded something miraculous, something striking and powerful, something that with conscious intervention could be transformed, and then used itself for transformative effect.’

‘Material Acts’ condenses some of Maguire’s research into minerals, mapping and mining and the relationship to rocks over the centuries. In 1824, Ireland was the first country in the world to be mapped by the British Ordnance Survey; the mapping of Ireland was developed to facilitate taxation and evaluate the ‘Underground Potential’ of geological and material reserves. Mapping was done by triangulation, by creating a series of primary triangles. Sightings were taken between stations using theodolites and light (often moonlight) on specific Mountains. Maguire has used real artefacts from the field, such as surveyors’ tripods, Gunter’s Chains and geological drill core boxes that once housed drill cores of riverine deep strata.

the soft fall of land
5 – 27 September 2025

Curated by Ciara Hickey

Preview: Thursday 4 September 2025 from 6 – 8 pm at The Library Project, 4 Temple Bar, Dublin 2.

Featuring selected BCPS and invited artists: Bassam Issa Al-Sabah, Sighle Bhreathnach-Cashell, Chloe Brenan, Aisling Conroy, Grace Ryan, Soft Fiction Projects

Black Church Print Studio is delighted to present the soft fall of land curated by Ciara Hickey.

This exhibition brings together new work by Bassam Issa al-Sabah, Sighle Bhreathnach-Cashell, Chloe Brenan, Aisling Conroy, Grace Ryan and Soft Fiction Projects. It considers the idea of Utopia and examines the pursuit of this imagined, impossible and aspirational state from a range of perspectives. The artworks in the exhibition oscillate between escapism and activism, fantasy and instruction for creating an alternative, better world.

Sighle Bhreathnach-Cashell and Bassam Issa al-Sabah have each made a new series of prints directing us into dense, imagined worlds, created from a personal lexicon of symbols drawn from the artists’ history, experience and critical response to the humanitarian, social and ecological issues pervading contemporary life.

Al-Sabah’s monochromatic prints, made during his Process Residency at Black Church Studios, evoke imagery from his moving image works and installations, where sublime, seductive digital landscapes offer speculative worlds in which dystopian and utopian scenarios meet and intersect. Bhreathnach-Cashell, known for her immersive installations and activist work has created a new series of aquatint etchings, ‘Ulster Cycles’. The work translates years of the artist’s unseen drawings and depict mimetic figures using Celtic, biological and architectural imagery, conjuring contemporary fables and cautionary tales.

For Grace Ryan and Chloe Brenan, two studio members at Black Church Print Studio, the invitation to think about Utopian ideals led them to a close examination of the natural world. Ryan will create a sculptural composition in the gallery based on Ikebana—the ancient Japanese art of flower arrangement rooted in balance, asymmetry, and the harmony between humans and nature.

Chloe Brenan’s current work is focused on the microcosm of an orchard in Carlow that is located beside her family home. Originally created as a colonial project to order and control the land, the orchard is now overgrown, the traces of colonial past are muted by the unabetted growth of weeds and shrubs over decades. The artist has used Super 8 photography to mark the process of observing the orchard and acknowledging the small changes and diversity of plant life as dictated by time, climate and chance. Brenan’s work in this exhibition represents the first and last frames of a roll of film on which she photographed the orchard, the edges of which are singed, capturing the moment that an image is simultaneously created and extinguished.

Black Church Print Studio member Aisling Conroy continues her exploration of sound and cymatics, the study of vibrational phenomena. This new work comprises a grid of 40 prints representing the 40 Chladni plates, a methodology developed by Ernst Chladni in 1787 as a visual manifestation of sound vibrations, looking at the patterns produced by sounds on flat plates made by a bow. The work offers an invitation to think about the invisible forces that shape our reality and consider the possibilities of new languages and systems for understanding and grappling with the unknown.

Soft Fiction Projects (Alessia Cargnelli and Emily McFarland) are an initiative that produce printed and digital matter to explore archives of underrepresented voices, oppositional histories and geopolitical narratives. For the exhibition they have produced a free print that can be taken by visitors. The print is based on Women’s News, a Belfast collective-run publication active between 1984 and 2011, who used the medium of print matter as a method for generating common ground, sharing experiences and encouraging community building. This leaflet uses DIY approaches to archival material, collected from MayDay Rooms, as a way to reimagine and revisit this history.

Exhibition continues until Saturday 27 September 2025.
Opening hours: Mon – Fri 11 am – 6 pm, Sat 12 – 6 pm.
Late Opening for Culture Night: Fri 20 Sept. 2025. Open until 9 pm.

Taylor Galleries is pleased to present Matters Arising, an exhibition of new work by Charles Tyrrell.

In reflecting on the exhibition title, Tyrrell notes: “I am simply paying homage to what I’ve realised is a constant throughout my painting life. It happens at every level… dealing with matters arising; the continuous process of reaction to preceding moves.”

The exhibition centres on ten new paintings that continue Tyrrell’s exploration of distorted grids — mapping, celebrating, and expanding on ideas of how a cohesive whole can emerge from random and disparate elements. Alongside these works, the exhibition includes a selection of new drawings, three new drypoint prints, and a towering timber wall-piece that fuses minimalist modular thinking with the transformative mark of fire.

Exhibition continues from the 7th of September to the 27 of September 2025

In this body of work, Cork based visual artist Ben Reilly transforms the Courthouse Gallery Into an immersive sculptural forest like landscape. Welded and carved limbs stretching skyward and a floating life raft swaying through the gallery all of which are Responding to the gallery’s height and natural light.

Drawing from beach combing excursions around the coastal landscape of West Cork, Reilly integrates found and foraged materials, reflecting themes of reuse and ecological connection. His process – part instinct, part experimentation—blurs the line between control and spontaneity.

Thylacines, snakes and birds of prey are the unlikely animals that navigate fractured environments in the work of Ailbhe Ní Bhriain. Through ancient tales of the mythic underworld, and recurring images of stalactites and stalagmites, we experience scenes set in caves and tunnels populated by ethnic stereotypes.

‘Ní Bhriain seeks to locate our growing anxieties of crises within an odd, orphic world, where colonial and industrial legacies are fused with the consciousness of our current moment’ – Michael Dempsey.

A new series of works created for Hugh Lane Gallery, The Dream Pool Intervals is a meditation on the spectre of loss that haunts the contemporary imagination. Images of rehearsed poses and gestures, appropriated from the early days of photography (an era designed to project stability, status, worldliness and superiority) are assembled by Ní Bhriain in the works we encounter. They belie the individuals represented and concentrate instead on the construct of the medium of photography itself.

‘in the tapestries are images of destroyed architecture – gathered from multiple sources, icons of war and climate disaster that seem to define this period’ – Ailbhe Ní Bhriain.

Five large-scale jacquard tapestries form the exhibition’s centre and create a journey through emblematic iconography of past colonial repression and early technological aspirations. Powerful and eloquent, they convey complex political and dynastic messages that resist singular interpretation and echo the fragmented nature of how information is gathered and absorbed in our subconscious.

The Dream Pool Intervals is curated by Michael Dempsey, Head of Exhibitions, Hugh Lane Gallery, and will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue.

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain: The Dream Pool Intervals officially opens to the public on 27 March 2025 and runs until 28 September 2025. Admission is free.

We are delighted to present Primate by Irish artist Daphne Wright. This work is one of a series of sculptures by Wright which explores the relationship between humans, animals and medicine. The sculpture was cast from a mould from a recently dead rhesus monkey at the scientific institution, Wisconsin National Primate Research Centre.

The artist explains, “To approach the problem of what we humans do by involving animals in our human life-saving research, the central act of making the artwork was to access this stage of the animal’s life-death via its direct physical form. The primate is our kin and our stand in. Not only in medicine but also for the heart and the imagination. It is an image of the human. Everything about how it might be like us is filled with pathos: its body, its proximity, its delicate biology, its expression. The rhesus monkey is our ancestor, our antecedent past and passed away, an object of reverie, honour, compassion and mourning.”

This notable addition to the collection continues to strengthen the Gallery’s mission of acquiring works by Irish and international artists to reflect evolving art practices. The current display of Primate coincides with Wright’s solo exhibition Deep Rooted Things in The Ashmolean Museum. Oxford which was conceived in partnership with Hugh Lane Gallery. The exhibition catalogue is available in the HLG Bookshop.

Margo Harkin is one of Ireland’s most versatile and respected filmmakers – having directed and produced fiction and documentary films for over forty years. Her work includes an invaluable chronicle of Northern Ireland’s recent political history.

After graduating in Fine Art from the Ulster College of Art and Design in 1974, Harkin worked as an art teacher and community worker in socially deprived areas of Derry. She joined Field Day Theatre Company in 1980 as an Assistant Stage Manager on Brian Friel’s Translations, before going on to work as a stage designer for the company.

In 1984, Harkin co-founded Derry Film & Video Workshop with Anne Crilly and Trisha Ziff delivering critical perspectives that ran counter to the censored narratives then broadcast by British and Irish television. The signal works of this period were Mother Ireland (1988), Anne Crilly’s controversial documentary about feminism and Irish republicanism, and Harkin’s own Hush-A-Bye Baby (1990), a feature drama about teenage pregnancy following the 1983 abortion referendum in Ireland.

Harkin established Besom Productions in 1992 making educational films for Channel 4 but her reputation as an astute, local documentarian of injustices was soon forged through a series of highly regarded television documentaries. Her cinema films, the surf documentary Waveriders (2003), by Joel Conroy (which she produced), and Stolen (2023), about the plight of unmarried mothers in Ireland in the 20th century, provided thoroughly researched, compelling accounts of their subjects.

Margo Harkin is a member of Aosdána. Her work has won countless awards and is widely taught to third-level film and media students.

Spanning over four decades, Harkin’s work has consistently challenged societal narratives, giving voice to the silenced and bearing witness to the social and political upheavals that have shaped the contemporary Irish landscape. This retrospective will span across the IFI’s cinema screens, as well as online via IFI@Home, IFI International and the IFI Archive Player.

IFI DIGITAL PLATFORMS

A selection of Margo Harkin’s films are available to rent for Irish audiences on IFI@Home and for international audiences on IFI International. These titles are now available for pre-order and will be available to watch from Wednesday Sept 3. Film bundles are available for purchase with pricing below.

Titles available on both IFI@Home and IFI International include: Hush-A-Bye Baby (1990), 12 Days in July (1997), Waveriders (2008), Bloody Sunday – A Derry Diary (2010), Far Side of Revenge (2012), and Stolen (2023).

A selection of Margo Harkin’s films are available free-to-watch worldwide on the IFI Archive Player.

IFI Archive Player exclusive titles will be available from Wednesday Sept 3, with The Hunger Strike (2006) and Eamonn McCann: A Long March (2018) available from Wednesday Oct 1, following their respective theatrical screening dates.

IFI Archive Player titles include: NYPD Nude (1995), Clear The Stage (1998), A Plague on Both Your Houses (1999), Looking for Lundy (2000), , You Looking at Me? (2003), The Hunger Strike (2006), Ocras (2006), The Return of Colmcille (2013), Eamonn McCann: A Long March (2018)

The IFI Archive Player is the virtual viewing room for the remarkable moving image collections held in the IFI Irish Film Archive, giving audiences across the globe instant access to this rich heritage.

BOOKING INFO

• Booking via ifi.ie/margo-harkin or by calling the IFI Box Office on 01 679 3477, or in person at the IFI, 6 Eustace Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2.
• The season is eligible for the IFI’s 25 & Under scheme, details of which can be found via ifi.ie/25under
  Tickets to the Margo Harkin: Career Interview will be €10.
• Season ticket bundles available: 3 for €30 and full season pass for €70.
• IFI Membership is required for all films without IFCO classification. If you are not an IFI Member then a membership fee of €1.50 will be added to each unclassified Margo Harkin: Radical Witness ticket price, and/or a Season Membership fee of €5.00 will be added to each Margo Harkin: Radical Witness ticket bundle.
• Films on IFI@Home and IFI International will be €5.99 each, with the exception of the newly restored, exclusive title Hush-A-Bye Baby which will be €7.99.
• A bundle of all streaming titles will be available for €34.

SUPPORT

The titles in this retrospective were digitised and preserved thanks to a grant from Coimisiún na Meán’s Archiving Funding Scheme, which aims to preserve content recorded for broadcast on radio or television. The restoration of Hush-A-Bye Baby (1990) from original 16mm elements has been created by the IFI Irish Film Archive for IFI’s Digital Restoration Project funded by Screen Ireland/Fís Éireann and supported by A Season of Classic Films an initiative of ACE – Association des Cinémathèques Européennes supported by the EU Creative Europe MEDIA programme.

The IFI Archive Player is developed with the support and partnership of Axonista.

The IFI acknowledges the support of the Arts Council.

Muine Bheag Arts is delighted to present Where the Field Fails to Hold, an exhibition by Cian Lawler.

Where the Field Fails to Hold is a series of photographic interventions which reflect on the rhythms of everyday life in a small town. The photographs document casual encounters with friends, familiar places and often overlooked details of Muine Bheag. Lawler began photographing his daily life in 2019 as a way to explore the emotional tether to his hometown.

The exhibition launches at Bagenalstown Community Garden at 6pm on 19th Sept as part of Culture Night and continues until 28th Sept.

ART EXHIBITION – TOM BYRNE
Title: “ I can buy myself flowers”.

5th August-30th September

Tom Byrne, born in Dublin in 1962, is an Irish artist known for his diverse range of work, including portraits, landscapes, and abstract pieces, often exploring themes of Irish history, culture, and spirituality. He studied at Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design and later in Berlin, drawing inspiration from the Bauhaus tradition, Irish writers like Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, and contemporary issues. Byrne is also recognized for his involvement in the punk movement, which influenced some of his early work, including album cover designs and street art. Tom was commissioned to do portraits by Hollywood filmmaker Elizabeth Banks, Matthew Rhys and Kerri Russell. In 2018, he was commissioned to create a piece for Pop Francis’s visit to Lithuania, which now hangs in the Vatican. . Tom Byrne’s style is very unique, he creates luxurious textures in nuanced, lush layers of paint and structured layers of colour, mediated by his own aesthetic experiences. Swirls of jewel-like colours transcend opaque, opulent washes of tone. Furthermore, he utilizes wax to create a luminous tangible surface which creates a multi-sensory experience, engaging the viewer not just on a visual level, but through a tactile experience as well.

Exhibition continues 12th August  – 30th September 2025.
Presented across both St Brigid’s Cathedral and the Round Tower, the exhibition honours the legacy of Brigid, celebrating her enduring presence as a figure of inspiration, compassion, and hope. The Cathedral showcases the original artworks within its sacred setting, while the Round Tower hosts an immersive display of illuminated replicas featuring imagery of Brigid. Installed across its nine windows and within the unique overhead space at the tower’s summit, the work allows natural light to filter through, creating a modest yet powerful tribute. This transforms the Round Tower into a radiant symbol of hope and offers a unique experience. Through the interplay of light, space, and imagery, the exhibition invites visitors to reflect on Brigid’s role as a unifying symbol in Irish heritage, creating a dialogue between tradition and innovation and encouraging contemplation on the values she embodies and their continued relevance in the modern world.

Thursday 21 August – Tuesday 30 September 2025

Curated by Margarita Cappock 

Nach Cuma? Who Cares? is an exhibition that explores the politics of care and responsibility with a focus on class and race within working class communities in Dublin. Developed out of a series of collaborative workshops with youth and adult groups in Rialto, Bluebell and Ballymun the project responds to an alarming rise in hate-driven rhetoric and division, particularly within working-class spaces. 

This exhibition follows on from Carey’s earlier work Stones, which focused on the relationship between individuals and place in Ballymun. Where Stones honed in on one community, Nach Cuma? expands to hold space across multiple sites, bringing people into slow, honest conversations about difficult truths and lived realities. Through a dialogical process and workshops within The LAB Gallery, the exhibition becomes a platform for intergenerational dialogue and reflection. Rejecting tokenism and reactionary politics, the work seeks instead to centre care and asks: who provides it, who receives it, and what happens when it is absent? Through visual, social, and dialogic forms, Nach Cuma? offers not conclusions but a methodology: one of listening, reflection, and accountability.

The exhibition will open on Thursday 21st August: 6pm – 8pm 

The exhibition will be opened by Willa White.

Aaron Sunderland Carey is a Dublin-based socially engaged artist and youth worker working across community spaces, youth clubs, and both informal and formal educational settings. His work investigates the intersections of land, class, masculinity, community, and systemic oppression. Central to his practice is the use of long-term collaboration, often with marginalised groups, to foster spaces for difficult, necessary conversations. At the core of this long-term practice is over three years of collaboration with Rialto Youth Project and a life spent in Ballymun making art and working with the community of Ballymun. Aaron’s work is grounded in ethics of care and accountability and is influenced by his hometown of Ballymun. He employs methods rooted in listening, reflection, and mutual learning—facilitating workshops that prioritise community voice and agency. He has worked extensively in areas such as Ballymun and Rialto, developing partnerships with youth projects, community organisations and local schools.

Aaron has participated in numerous socially engaged residencies and projects, including Common Grounds Studio 468, and has collaborated with groups including Rialto Youth Project, Poppintree youth project, The Axis Ballymun and The LAB Gallery. His practice sits between visual art, storytelling, and social action—always aiming to make space for storytelling and transformation.

Helen Blake is a painter whose practice focuses on colour, engaging with rhythm and formalism, chance and deliberation. Using a working method where process and contemplation guide the evolution of the work, her overtly hand-made paintings record and examine colour conversations within accumulating pattern structures, embracing accidents, flaws and discrepancies within their rhythms.

Andrew Wilson, former Curator of Modern and Contemporary British Art at Tate Britain, has written of Blake’s work that is underpinned by process – “always variously methodical and rational, yet also absurd and affected by the interruption of chance. In Blake’s paintings, colour is deployed to follow a given order and yet these are paintings of nature ….. not the rigid order of an urban modernism, but the texture and rhythms, and immediacy of life unfolding”.
As well four solo exhibitions at the Molesworth Gallery, Blake has shown at the RHA in FUTURES (2014), FUTURES Anthology (2015) and as part of ‘In and of itself – Abstraction in the age of images’ (2022). She was included in ‘Generation 2022: New Irish Painting’ at the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, and received the Highly Commended award at the Contemporary Bristish Painting Prize (2022) . Her work has been acquired by the Arts Council of Ireland and by the OPW for the State Collection.

Exhibition continues from the 4th of September to the 30th of September 2025

From an early age, Kyrre Mogster has been interested in the details and patterns in nature and everyday life. Born in Stord, Norway in 1985, he lived within a community of fisherfolk until age 7, when he moved with his family to Seattle, USA. His point of departure might be a remote fjord in Norway, but his work glides throughout art history, onboarding the nuance of landscape and society and lands with a vitality and confidence that can only be achieved by coming home after a long and arduous journey.

Exhibition continues from the 5th of September to the 30th of September 2025

Discover ‘Ink + Earth,’ a month long exhibition by pen and watercolour artist, Alison McEvoy.
After a sell-out show in 2024, Abbeyleix Library will once again host this exhibition for September 2025.
Alison uses pen, watercolour, chalk and oil pastel to create artwork that captures the natural beauty of the bog.
This collection, which marks her second solo exhibition, features her favourite trees and scenic locations around Abbeyleix Bog.
Each piece in the collection provides an intimate glimpse into the landscapes that inspire her, showcasing the weird and wonderful trees on the bog.

Exhibition continues from the 1st of September to the 30th of September 2025

An exhibition is taking place at Arklow Library of 8 new ceramic sculptures based on a Vermeer painting, by Irene Plazewska.
Each sculpture is a relief portrait of a version of The Girl with the Pearl Earring.
The artist is a member of the 402 Artists Collective and has recently had 2 solo shows in Arklow.

IMMA Collection: Art as Agency is a major three-year display celebrating IMMA’s Permanent Collection as a source of agency and knowledge. Featuring over 100 artists, from the 1960s to the present, it highlights key works, including many recent acquisitions. This ambitious exhibition invites engagement and research over time, allowing for a rich durational experience of Ireland’s Modern and Contemporary Art Collection.

Through thematic, chronological, geographical, and media-based approaches, the exhibition examines how artworks connect across time and contexts, fostering new interpretations and relevance. Works from the 1960s to the 1980s evoke the foundational story of the Irish art world. While acknowledging the context of the modernist, predominantly male dominance of that era, the exhibition also spotlights the material innovation and socially engaged practices of others who persisted despite the relatively conservative status quo.

The exhibition also presents more recent practice that explores urgent global themes such as gender, hybridity, cultural histories, de-colonialism, diaspora, migration, food injustice, climate, and ecological change. Memory, imagination, and storytelling play pivotal roles in these works, offering generative ways to process fragmentation, dislocation, and survival in unfamiliar spaces. New and existing works in the IMMA grounds will extend these themes.

The exhibition includes a specially created ‘white cube’ gallery space inspired by Brian O’Doherty’s renowned series of essays Inside the White Cube – The Ideology of the Gallery Space (1976), that critiques the auratic, market-driven effects of the white cube gallery format. Likewise the choice of works curated for this space pushes back by highlighting works by Post-War American women, pioneering conceptualist artworks by Marcel Duchamp and Brian O’Doherty as well as a contemporary feminist response by Andrea Geyer.

By interweaving historical and contemporary narratives, Art as Agency invites audiences to reflect on the evolving meanings and possibilities of art in shaping our understanding of and action in the world.

Kith & Kin: The Quilts of Gee’s Bend is a group exhibition featuring the work of African American women from a small Alabama community whose work have become symbols of Black empowerment and cultural pride. This stunning collection of textile works celebrates African American culture and heritage.

28 Feb 2025–27 Oct 2025
Gallery 3

IMMA presents Kith & Kin: The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, the first exhibition of the Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers in Ireland, co-organised with Souls Grown Deep. The Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers, a group of African American women from a small Alabama community with a 200-year tradition of quilt making, have created quilts that hold both artistic and political significance. Artistically, their work is renowned for its improvisational style, bold colours, and abstract designs, often compared to modernist art movements like abstract expressionism. Their quilts, made from recycled fabrics, are deeply rooted in African American textile traditions and showcase unique creativity in geometric patterns.

Politically, the quilts reflect resilience and self-sufficiency, as they were born out of necessity in an economically deprived, racially segregated region. The civil rights movement brought attention to these women, who became symbols of Black empowerment and cultural pride. Their craft has been exhibited in museums worldwide, highlighting the importance of marginalised voices in American history. The quilts serve as both a celebration of African American heritage and a testament to the strength and creativity of women in the face of systemic oppression.

Through the public programme IMMA will explore parallels with the textile and quilt-making traditions in Ireland.

IMMA TALKS / Lecture & Launch
The Quilts of Gee’s Bend
Raina Lampkins-Fielder
Join Raina Lampkins-Fielder, chief curator for the Souls Grown Deep Foundation for a talk on the unique quilt making tradition of Gee’s Bend, a community of over five generations of Black American quiltmakers located on the banks of the Alabama River. This talk coincides with the launch of the exhibition Kith & Kin: The Quilts of Gee’s Bend.

Thurs 27 Feb 2025, 5pm – 6pm
Johnston Suite, IMMA
Booking required – Free

Pallas Projects/Studios are delighted to announce the participating artists in our Arts Council funded programme of Artist-Initiated Projects 2025. The series of 8 x 3-week exhibitions between March–November 2025 will present exhibitions of new work by:

Cillian Finnerty, Michella Randilu Perera, Niamh Coffey, Reuben Brown, Lucy Andrews, Kathryn Maguire, Gary Farrelly, Caroline Mac Cathmaoil.

Artist-Initiated Projects at Pallas Projects/Studios is an open-submission, annual gallery programme of 8 x 3-week exhibitions taking place between March and November 2025. This unique programme of funded, artist-initiated projects selected via open call is highly accessible to artists, with a focus on early career, emerging artists and recent graduates. Projects are supplemented with artists’ talks, texts, workshops or performances, and gallery visits by colleges and local schools.

Cillian Finnerty — March 27th – April 12th

Michella Randilu Perera — April 24th – May 10th

Niamh Coffey — May 22nd – June 7th

Reuben Brown — June 19th – 5th July

Lucy Andrews — July 17th – August 2nd

Kathryn Maguire — September 11th – 27th

Gary Farrelly — October 9th – 25th

Caroline Mac Cathmhaoil — 6th – 22nd November

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Pallas Projects/Studios is one of Ireland’s longest running artist-run spaces, with a dedicated tradition over 28 years towards the professional development of artists in a peer-led, supportive environment, providing opportunities for emerging and mid-career artists to develop and exhibit new work. PP/S have established a nationwide and international reputation among artists and organisations, and a public profile through successful and critically engaged exhibitions, publishing, collaborations and partnerships, and education programmes for schools. Recent projects include the 4-year research project and publication ‘Artist-Run Europe’, published by Onomatopee, Eindhoven in 2016, and the annual ‘Periodical Review’ exhibition now in its thirteenth year.

Thylacines, snakes and birds of prey are the unlikely animals that navigate fractured environments in the work of Ailbhe Ní Bhriain. Through ancient tales of the mythic underworld, and recurring images of stalactites and stalagmites, we experience scenes set in caves and tunnels populated by ethnic stereotypes.

‘Ní Bhriain seeks to locate our growing anxieties of crises within an odd, orphic world, where colonial and industrial legacies are fused with the consciousness of our current moment’ – Michael Dempsey.

A new series of works created for Hugh Lane Gallery, The Dream Pool Intervals is a meditation on the spectre of loss that haunts the contemporary imagination. Images of rehearsed poses and gestures, appropriated from the early days of photography (an era designed to project stability, status, worldliness and superiority) are assembled by Ní Bhriain in the works we encounter. They belie the individuals represented and concentrate instead on the construct of the medium of photography itself.

‘in the tapestries are images of destroyed architecture – gathered from multiple sources, icons of war and climate disaster that seem to define this period’ – Ailbhe Ní Bhriain.

Five large-scale jacquard tapestries form the exhibition’s centre and create a journey through emblematic iconography of past colonial repression and early technological aspirations. Powerful and eloquent, they convey complex political and dynastic messages that resist singular interpretation and echo the fragmented nature of how information is gathered and absorbed in our subconscious.

The Dream Pool Intervals is curated by Michael Dempsey, Head of Exhibitions, Hugh Lane Gallery, and will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue.

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain: The Dream Pool Intervals officially opens to the public on 27 March 2025 and runs until 28 September 2025. Admission is free.

An ambitious new group exhibition, Staying with the Trouble, inspired by author and philosopher Donna Haraway’s seminal work of the same name, opens at IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) on Friday 2 May 2025. The exhibition features over 40 Irish and Ireland-based artists whose diverse practices explore urgent themes of our time.

Pushing against social norms, Staying with the Trouble challenges us and attempts to make sense of the present, questioning interspecies relationships, ideas of transformation, and renewal. The exhibition challenges human-centric narratives, advocating for a multi-species/multi-kin perspective through sculpture, film, painting, installation and performance.

The exhibition follows Haraway’s propositions such as “Making Kin”, “Composting” and “Sowing Worlds”, inviting visitors to rethink their connections with humans, animals, and ecosystems. Other propositions include “Critters”, emphasising the agency of non-human life, while “Techno-Apocalypse” critiques dystopian views on technology, proposing a more nuanced, interconnected future.
Commenting on the exhibition Mary Cremin, Head of Programming, IMMA, said; “Staying with the Trouble is a call to rethink, reshape our views — to stay present in complexity, to unlearn human-centric ways of seeing, and to lean into the radical potential of kinship across species, materials, and worlds. This exhibition is both a provocation and an invitation — to reimagine our place in a shared, entangled future.”
There will be a screening programme of film and moving image works as part of Living Canvas at IMMA, running throughout May to September.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a live performance series on Saturday 26 July 2025.

Artists featured in the exhibition include Farouk858, Kian Benson Bailes, George Bolster, Renèe Helèna Browne, Myrid Carten, Elizabeth Cope, Redd Ekks, Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Andy Fitz, Laura Fitzgerald, Marie Foley, Paddy Graham, Aoibheann Greenan, Kerry Guinan, Austin Hearne, Atsushi Kaga, Michael Kane, Sam Keogh, Caoimhe Kilfeather, Diaa Langan, Áine Mac Giolla Bhríde, Marielle MacLeman, Alan Magee, Christopher Mahon, Michelle Malone, Colin Martin, Maria McKinney, Bea McMahon, Thaís Muniz, Bridget O’Gorman, Venus Patel, Samir Mahmood, Alice Rekab, Eoghan Ryan, Jacqui Shelton, Sonia Shiel, Katie Watchorn, Luke van Gelderen, amongst others.

Image credit: Venus Patel, ‘Still from Daisy: Prophet of the Apocalypse’ (2023). Courtesy of the Artist

Entangled Life
Curated by Cristina Nicotra
May–December 2025

Entangled Life, supported by Community Foundation Ireland, is a programme exploring the deep connections between climate, society, and the ecosystems where art and community intertwine. This initiative unravels heterogeneous climate and social topics, by understanding ecology as a complex web of relationships—between humans, the more-than-human world, and political and natural environments.

Entangled Life aims to provide space to facilitate a network of relationships, collaboration and engagement within the community. Over the course of 8 months the project will bring together community participants, artists and experts – including Lisa Fitzsimons (Strategy and Sustainability Lead at Irish Museum of Modern Art), Eileen Hutton PhD (Head of Art and Ecology at Burren College of Art), and Gareth Kennedy (artist, lecturer and lead coordinator on NCAD FIELD) – for a series of monthly panel talks, workshops and artistic interventions at Pallas Projects, culminating in an exhibition in December 2025.

The project draws inspiration from Merlin Sheldrake’s book of the same name, which explores the interconnected mycelium worlds that allow for unexpected possibilities, and Joanna Macy’s principles of ‘Active Hope’, which emphasize knowledge, compassion and action. With the final goal of promoting a decarbonised future, the project explores the links between climate issues and society, and shows how they are relevant in our daily life and our community.

The events series will provide diverse perspectives and room for direct interaction among participants through a non-linear, non-hierarchical approach, fostering exploration and critical thinking, considering mental wellbeing. This multidisciplinary initiative feeds the need to provide opportunities for influencing and activating change effectively. It allows the community to learn about climate issues, react, and co-create diverse, dynamic and unpredictable connections and inspirations. Feedback and reactions collected throughout the programme will be compiled into a toolkit report.

In all, seven topics will be unravelled and discussed through open panel discussions, workshops beginning with The Art of Just Transition on Wednesday 14th of May, with Rachel Fallon, Artist; Dr Egle Gusciute, Assistant Professor in Sociology, UCD; and Michelle Murphy, Research & Policy Analyst with Social Justice Ireland and member of Just Transition Commission.

Events Schedule

14th May The Art of Just Transition (Talk)

11th June Discovering biomaterials in art and society (Talk)

9th July Art and biomaterials (Workshop)

3rd September Beyond Words: communicating sustainability (Talk)

1st October Intersectionality in art and climate (Talk)

29th October Climate and Art: programming & advocacy (Talk)

27th November Entangled Life (Exhibition opening)

3rd December Climate crisis and mental health (Workshops)

17th December Climate activism and socially engaged art (Talk)

Events take place Wednesdays, 6–8pm. Participants are welcome to attend some or all events. Places can be booked via Eventbrite, but there will be a places for walk-ins subject to availability

To be Opened by Niamh Flanagan, Artist, Master Printer and Program Coordinator at Graphic Studio Dublin
On Wednesday 11th June 2025 at 7pm

Navigating Space is a solo exhibition by Maria Atanacković. Bringing together works on paper, wood, and linen, the exhibition explores the construction of space through assemblage and printmaking.

Atanacković’s practice is grounded in the process of breaking down and rebuilding form, using geometric shapes, layering, and composition to investigate the balance between structure and spontaneity.

This new body of work reflects her ongoing exploration of spatial relationships. Through bold, graphic elements and carefully considered arrangements, she creates abstract compositions that echo the ways we navigate our surroundings – both physically and emotionally. Some works have a precise, architectural quality, while others evolve through a more intuitive process, where forms emerge, shift, and settle into place.

Atanacković’s interest in space extends beyond the visible, delving into the underlying frameworks that shape our sense of place and belonging. She is particularly drawn to the tension between familiarity and displacement, and how we create connections within unfamiliar environments. Navigating Space considers these ideas through material and form, inviting the viewer to engage with the work as a process of movement and discovery.

Navigating Space by Maria Atanacković will be accompanied by a programme of engagement for young people, including a response space in our First Floor Gallery.

IMMA presents a solo exhibition by Sam Gilliam (1933 – 2022), one of the great innovators in post-war American painting, co-organised with the Sam Gilliam Foundation. Emerging in the mid-1960s, his canonical ‘Drape’ paintings merged painting, sculpture, and performance in conversation with architecture in entirely new ways. Suspending unstretched lengths of painted canvas from the walls or ceilings of exhibition spaces, Gilliam transformed his medium and the contexts in which it was viewed.

Sewing Fields highlights Gilliam’s connection to Ireland, where a transformative residency at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in the 1990s reshaped his artistic practice. Gilliam embraced new materials, working with pre-stained fabrics that he had shipped to Ireland, cutting and layering them into sculptural compositions. A collaboration with a local dressmaker further expanded this process, reinforcing his innovative fusion of painting and textile techniques.

The dramatic, undulating forms in his work resonate with the vastness and wildness of the Irish coast, featuring loose, flowing compositions that reflect the organic and unpredictable nature of the land and sea. Gilliam’s signature vibrant colour fields were influenced by the unique Irish light, resulting in atmospheric, almost translucent hues. By moving away from the rigid geometry of modernism, Gilliam’s work in Ireland fostered an intuitive dialogue with the surrounding environment, celebrating the physicality of painting and the emotional resonance of place through abstraction and materiality.

This exhibition continues IMMA’s engagement with artists whose work has received renewed attention and accolades in recent years that has included Howardena Pindell (2023), Derek Jarman (2019), and Frank Bowling (2018).

We are delighted to present Primate by Irish artist Daphne Wright. This work is one of a series of sculptures by Wright which explores the relationship between humans, animals and medicine. The sculpture was cast from a mould from a recently dead rhesus monkey at the scientific institution, Wisconsin National Primate Research Centre.

The artist explains, “To approach the problem of what we humans do by involving animals in our human life-saving research, the central act of making the artwork was to access this stage of the animal’s life-death via its direct physical form. The primate is our kin and our stand in. Not only in medicine but also for the heart and the imagination. It is an image of the human. Everything about how it might be like us is filled with pathos: its body, its proximity, its delicate biology, its expression. The rhesus monkey is our ancestor, our antecedent past and passed away, an object of reverie, honour, compassion and mourning.”

This notable addition to the collection continues to strengthen the Gallery’s mission of acquiring works by Irish and international artists to reflect evolving art practices. The current display of Primate coincides with Wright’s solo exhibition Deep Rooted Things in The Ashmolean Museum. Oxford which was conceived in partnership with Hugh Lane Gallery. The exhibition catalogue is available in the HLG Bookshop.

In her new experimental moving image work The Glass Booth / An Both Gloine, artist Jenny Brady casts a cinematic gaze on the figure of the interpreter, exploring the interpreting profession and the contemporary landscape of interpretation. Through vignettes set in both extreme and familiar environments, the film portrays the processes of listening, speaking, and forgetting within acts of formal and informal interpretation. This film is a study of the complex, intersubjective nature of interpreters’ work, placing them at the centre, rather than intermediaries that blend into the background. Brady seeks to illuminate the interpretive act – an elaborate, sensory process of listening, decoding and responding.

The film emerges from research into the birth of the interpreting profession, which is less than a century old. Simultaneous interpretation technology, the language interpretation system that allows interpreters to hear and speak at the same time, was first employed prominently during the Nuremberg Trials that took place between 1945 and 1946, developing in direct relation to modern international diplomatic relations and the founding of the United Nations. This project builds on themes explored in Brady’s recent films, Music for Solo Performer (2022) and Receiver (2019) which looked at the complexities of technologically mediated communication.

The Glass Booth examines the art of interpretation as it extends to four different arenas; Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev meeting at the Geneva Summit in 1985, an asylum seeker interview at the International Protection Office, a Young Interpreters programme in a Dublin primary school, and a European conference interpreter translating into target languages in real time. In each setting, though stakes are high, slips are inevitable. One interpreter speaks of his reliance on muscle memory to do the job, likening his work in simultaneous interpretation to his former career as a paramedic and interest in rally driving. Probing the negotiation between intention and expression, the artwork lays bare how interpretation is essential to humankind’s survival. The film will be screened in two, alternating versions: one with subtitles and the other with audiovisual descriptions for blind or low vision audiences. The Glass Booth has been generously funded through the Arts Council’s Film Project Award and premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh 2025.
Text by Aisling Clark.

Screening Times: 11:00am, 11:40am, 12:20pm, 1:00pm, 1:40pm, 2:20pm, 3:00pm, 3:40pm, 4:20pm, 5:00pm.
The film will be screened in two, alternating versions: one with subtitles and the other with audiovisual descriptions for Blind or low vision audiences.

Alan Butler
Mary FitzGerald
Damien Flood
Mark Joyce
Sorcha McNamara
Bridget Riley
Oisín Tozer

Exhibition dates : 1 August – 19 September 2025
Opening reception : Thursday 31 July 2025 5-8 pm

Earthly Delights is in the title of Hieronymous Bosch’s early 16th Century triptych The Garden of Eathly Delights. This painting charts the Creation, the Birth and Fall of man and woman. It was painted in The Netherlands in the 1490s or early 1500s. It is currently in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. It has captivated audiences and artists since that time, including some Irish artists and one or two in this show.

The Garden theme is also continued in Green On Red Gallery’s summer Earthly Delights exhibition looking at artists whose work looks at life and death and society, not to mention a world in crisis.

Opening reception:
Thursday 31 July, 6pm

‘Faigh Amach’ is an initiative by Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (TBG+S) in partnership with Culture Ireland and Southwark Park Galleries (SPG), London, to support an artist in presenting their first solo exhibition outside Ireland.

Roughly translating as ‘discover’, ‘Faigh Amach’ takes place as a group exhibition at TBG+S in Summer 2025, bringing together three artists selected through an open call process in 2024: Ella Bertilsson, Kathy Tynan, Emily Waszak. One of the three exhibiting artists will be invited to present their first international solo exhibition at SPG Lake Gallery in Spring 2026. During the planning and duration of ‘Faigh Amach’, SPG Director Judith Carlton and Deputy Director Charlotte Baker will conduct in-person and online studio visits with the three artists, as well as visiting the exhibition at TBG+S before making the selection for their programme.

Ella Bertilsson uses images and materials related to pop culture and the aesthetics of nostalgia to evoke a shared sense of memory and place. Her installations, which often incorporate film and performance, use the visual language of magical realism and absurdism to conjure darkly humorous and dreamlike sensory environments. The clash of bizarreness and naivety reflects the impact of anxiety and precarity in everyday life. Bertilsson’s installation for ‘Faigh Amach’ creates a new encounter with a recent film work, ‘A PEANUT WORM’S DREAM’, as viewers nestle into an immersive interior space behind a mountain scene of a photographic backdrop. Now emerging from the film itself, some of its characters – a fish, and a goat/deer – begin to populate their real-world surroundings outside of the confines of the film’s storage unit setting.

Kathy Tynan’s paintings of familiar cityscapes and domestic scenes illuminate moments of affection, intimacy and curiosity. Rather than focussing her gaze on monumental landmarks, Tynan instead attributes value to that which is otherwise overlooked. Her semi-autobiographical subjects include her own family and friends but speak more broadly to shared enthusiasms, experiences of care, community, and relationships. Tynan’s group of recent paintings in the exhibition collate a number of personal scenes from memory and family photographs. Patterned duvets and pyjamas conflate timelines between the artist’s own childhood and her experience as a mother with a young son. The sequence of paintings appear as a panorama of cinematic flashbacks.

Emily Waszak’s textile and assemblage works are informed by rituals of her Japanese cultural heritage, experiences of grief and the landscape of her home in Donegal. Using both ancient and contemporary weaving techniques, alongside the collection and display of found materials and other hand-made objects, Waszak combines processes that transcend time and place to find meaning in loss and understand how to access otherworldliness. Waszak has produced several large-scale woven works for the exhibition using a combination of discarded waste textiles gathered from industrial sites in Dublin, and fragments of fabric with deep personal significance. The textiles loom above a group of clay vessels holding ceremonial objects such as animal bones, which can be used as shakers in a form of incantation to connect with the spirit world.

Ella Bertilsson was born in Umeå, Sweden, and works in Dublin and Kilkenny. Her recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include The Horse, Dublin (2025); Ballina Art Centre (2024); The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon (2023); The Complex, Dublin (2022).

Kathy Tynan was born and works in Dublin. Her recent solo exhibitions include Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin (2024); Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise (2022); Highlanes Gallery (with Andrew Vickery), Drogheda (2020); The LAB, Dublin (2019).

Emily Waszak was born in North Carolina, United States, and works between Dublin and Donegal. Her recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny (2026); Pallas Projects, Dublin (2024); TU Dublin (2023).

Southwark Park Galleries is an interdisciplinary arts organisation in South East London. Through a locally relevant and internationally significant programme of exhibitions, performances and public engagement, their mission is to connect people using the intersection of art, nature and culture to facilitate meaning and wellbeing across communities. Established in 1984, they have a thriving reputation as a test site for experimental practice by commissioning artists at a critical stage to make their most ambitious work for exhibition.

ART EXHIBITION – TOM BYRNE
Title: “ I can buy myself flowers”.

5th August-30th September

Tom Byrne, born in Dublin in 1962, is an Irish artist known for his diverse range of work, including portraits, landscapes, and abstract pieces, often exploring themes of Irish history, culture, and spirituality. He studied at Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design and later in Berlin, drawing inspiration from the Bauhaus tradition, Irish writers like Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, and contemporary issues. Byrne is also recognized for his involvement in the punk movement, which influenced some of his early work, including album cover designs and street art. Tom was commissioned to do portraits by Hollywood filmmaker Elizabeth Banks, Matthew Rhys and Kerri Russell. In 2018, he was commissioned to create a piece for Pop Francis’s visit to Lithuania, which now hangs in the Vatican. . Tom Byrne’s style is very unique, he creates luxurious textures in nuanced, lush layers of paint and structured layers of colour, mediated by his own aesthetic experiences. Swirls of jewel-like colours transcend opaque, opulent washes of tone. Furthermore, he utilizes wax to create a luminous tangible surface which creates a multi-sensory experience, engaging the viewer not just on a visual level, but through a tactile experience as well.

– Opening Times: Thursday 7 August to Friday 19 September, 11.30am to 5.30pm
– Open daily for Kilkenny Arts Festival, then Thursday to Saturday weekly

‘beyond, beneath, Beside’ explores the site of the Tea Houses and their proximity to the River Nore and its nearby tributary the River Breaghagh. During her residency, artist Kate Fahey investigated the locale, including Talbot’s Inch model arts and crafts village, the former Greenvale Woollen Mills, and engaged with the rich subterranean, cultural and industrial history associated with the rivers, including the great flood in 1947.

Drawing on materials, forms and motifs relevant to the historical arts and crafts revival in Kilkenny, the installation positions the neighbouring River Breaghagh (translates as the deceitful river) as a swirling, twisting and uneasy presence, a trickster figure, liable to rise and surge unpredictably. Situating tactile encounters with the material world at the centre of this inquiry, the exhibition poetically echoes a sense of networked and interconnected resonances across time and space, situated beyond, beneath and beside the riverbank.

Curated by Rachel Botha.
Design by Emmet Brown.

Kate Fahey is an artist based between Kilkenny and London, working with sound, sculpture, moving image, print and installation. She has shown her work at spaces including the ICA London, VISUAL Carlow, the Bluecoat Liverpool, the CCArt Andratx, Arti et Amicitiae Amsterdam and Pallas Projects Dublin. She received an MA in Fine Art Print at the Royal College of Art, London and completed a practice-based PhD at the University of the Arts London in 2020. She is a senior lecturer in Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University.

The Tea Houses are situated by the River Nore in Kilkenny city centre and have been acquired by Kilkenny Arts Office to host an art programme that encourages a sense of community and active citizenship.

Kindly supported by Kilkenny Arts Office, Kilkenny County Council, ArtLinks and Arts Council, Ireland.

Exhibition Opening: Saturday 9th August, 3.00 – 5.00pm. All Welcome.

Butler Gallery, in association with Kilkenny Arts Festival, is delighted to present an exhibition exploring the theme of ‘Cities of the World’ by two artists, Kathy Prendergast and Chris Leach. The two have never met, but are intrinsically linked by this subject matter which they realise in very different ways.

Kathy Prendergast, an Irish London-based artist, is represented by her suite of 113 City Drawings which were begun in 1992. Owned by IMMA, they have not been exhibited in many years. Based on contemporary maps of the world’s capital cities, Prendergast compresses each city, large and small, and follows her own sense of scale to contain each city on the same size paper. Transcribing the network of lines with understated pencil marks she conveys the pattern of routes through, within and around each city, imposing an unfathomable sense of democracy on the world. The skeletal images reduce even the largest and most powerful communities to a delicate network of lines that resemble organic patterns in nature.

Chris Leach, a British Manchester-based artist, began his Capital Cities drawing project in 2012 and continued until 2022. He has completed 196 tiny drawings of every recognised capital city in the world which together functions as one piece of work. Leach’s miniature drawings are solidly three-dimensional, drawn with pencil, scalpel and burnishing tools on the gessoed face of an oak block. Leach is interested in how scale can be used as a tool for both psychological and representational investigation.

The cities work by Kathy Prendergast and Chris Leach is a fascinating juxtaposition and prompts wider discussions around geography, architecture and politics—what cities say about us and what they don’t.

Additionally, a film programme ‘City as Character’ will highlight iconic cities in both mainstream and art house cinema. Co-curated by Butler Gallery and Out of Focus, films will be shown in the Digital Gallery and also in collaboration with the Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny.

Anna O’Sullivan
Director & Exhibition Curator

Learning & Public Engagement Events:

Artists Kathy Prendergast and Chris Leach in conversation with exhibition curator Anna O’Sullivan and Dr Yvonne Scott, Tuesday 12th August 2025 at 12.00pm, Parade Tower, Kilkenny Castle. Free ticketed event, available to book on the Kilkenny Arts Festival website.

Dr Yvonne Scott is an Emeritus Fellow and former Associate Professor of History of Art at Trinity College Dublin.
She was awarded the RHA Gold Medal for 2025 in recognition of her services to Irish art. She has researched and published extensively in modern and contemporary art, including analysis of various aspects of the work of artist Kathy Prendergast. Her most recent book is Landscape and Environment in Contemporary Irish Art, published by Churchill House Press in association with the Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2023.

Image: (L) Kathy Prendergast, Mexico City from ‘City Drawings’, 1992, Pencil on Paper, 24 x 32cm, Collection Irish Museum of Modern Art, Purchase 1996, © Kathy Prendergast. (R) Chris Leach, Tallin, Estonia, Pencil, scalpel, burnishing tool, rabbit skin gesso on quarter sawn oak, 32 x 43mm (From Capital Cities series 2013-2023)

Exhibition continues 12th August  – 30th September 2025.
Presented across both St Brigid’s Cathedral and the Round Tower, the exhibition honours the legacy of Brigid, celebrating her enduring presence as a figure of inspiration, compassion, and hope. The Cathedral showcases the original artworks within its sacred setting, while the Round Tower hosts an immersive display of illuminated replicas featuring imagery of Brigid. Installed across its nine windows and within the unique overhead space at the tower’s summit, the work allows natural light to filter through, creating a modest yet powerful tribute. This transforms the Round Tower into a radiant symbol of hope and offers a unique experience. Through the interplay of light, space, and imagery, the exhibition invites visitors to reflect on Brigid’s role as a unifying symbol in Irish heritage, creating a dialogue between tradition and innovation and encouraging contemplation on the values she embodies and their continued relevance in the modern world.

Exhibition continues 15th August – 20th September 2025. 
Mary Cullen-Kelly presents Carousel.
15th August – 20th September at Dunamaise Arts Centre.
Free to visit during opening hours, and 1 hour prior events (Tues to Sat, 1pm to 5pm).

Mary Cullen Kelly likes to time travel using paint, print and collage. Her colourful and detailed images can feel all at once familiar and strange. She creates moments and places that may or may not have existed. She is interested in and has studied the experience of Flow Theory in relation to art making.

Mary was awarded this solo exhibition as a prize from our Open Submission Show 2024 by Guest Selector Vera Klute, RHA.

About the Artist
Mary is an artist from Dublin who lives in Carlow. She has a degree in Fine Art Print from NCAD and an MSc in Disability Studies from UCD, which focussed on the experience of engagement in arts activities, for which she won the Eunice Kennedy Shriver medal. She has previously exhibited in VISUAL Carlow and extensively in group and open submission shows, including the RHA Annual. Mary has been involved in community arts in Dublin and Carlow. See more on www.marycullenkelly.com

The exhibition title references the TV series MadMen; there the ‘carousel’ is a Kodak slide projector that ‘moves the viewer forwards and backwards’ in time.
This series of paintings, prints and objects seek to describe a world that can feel familiar and strange all at the same time. Things are always changing. The artist draws on science fiction movies from the 50s and 60s. Colourful paintings of domestic and ‘small town’ settings draw us in with a whiff of nostalgia, a sense of the familiar which is subverted as things are not quite as expected. Photopolymer prints and made objects offer clues that the world we are in has been altered. Flora and other items have appeared nearby. Questions are posed but not answered. The world has changed and we are not quite sure where we are.

Thursday 21 August – Tuesday 30 September 2025

Curated by Margarita Cappock 

Nach Cuma? Who Cares? is an exhibition that explores the politics of care and responsibility with a focus on class and race within working class communities in Dublin. Developed out of a series of collaborative workshops with youth and adult groups in Rialto, Bluebell and Ballymun the project responds to an alarming rise in hate-driven rhetoric and division, particularly within working-class spaces. 

This exhibition follows on from Carey’s earlier work Stones, which focused on the relationship between individuals and place in Ballymun. Where Stones honed in on one community, Nach Cuma? expands to hold space across multiple sites, bringing people into slow, honest conversations about difficult truths and lived realities. Through a dialogical process and workshops within The LAB Gallery, the exhibition becomes a platform for intergenerational dialogue and reflection. Rejecting tokenism and reactionary politics, the work seeks instead to centre care and asks: who provides it, who receives it, and what happens when it is absent? Through visual, social, and dialogic forms, Nach Cuma? offers not conclusions but a methodology: one of listening, reflection, and accountability.

The exhibition will open on Thursday 21st August: 6pm – 8pm 

The exhibition will be opened by Willa White.

Aaron Sunderland Carey is a Dublin-based socially engaged artist and youth worker working across community spaces, youth clubs, and both informal and formal educational settings. His work investigates the intersections of land, class, masculinity, community, and systemic oppression. Central to his practice is the use of long-term collaboration, often with marginalised groups, to foster spaces for difficult, necessary conversations. At the core of this long-term practice is over three years of collaboration with Rialto Youth Project and a life spent in Ballymun making art and working with the community of Ballymun. Aaron’s work is grounded in ethics of care and accountability and is influenced by his hometown of Ballymun. He employs methods rooted in listening, reflection, and mutual learning—facilitating workshops that prioritise community voice and agency. He has worked extensively in areas such as Ballymun and Rialto, developing partnerships with youth projects, community organisations and local schools.

Aaron has participated in numerous socially engaged residencies and projects, including Common Grounds Studio 468, and has collaborated with groups including Rialto Youth Project, Poppintree youth project, The Axis Ballymun and The LAB Gallery. His practice sits between visual art, storytelling, and social action—always aiming to make space for storytelling and transformation.

Exhibition continues from 23rd August to 1st November 2025

A major solo exhibition by artist Maud Cotter maelstrom presents a group of works which seek to examine the complexity of the present, and engages with the complexity and form of change as process, with works that reference the dual directionality of time, and the relational nature of matter.

This exhibition of large scale works by this established Irish artist responds to the complexity and spatial range of the site of Highlanes Gallery across its two floors.

Integrated into the exhibition is a stream of engagement with the historic and contemporary work from the Drogheda Municipal Art Collection.

Within the exhibition of new and recent large-scale sculpture and installation is the eponymous work – maelstrom which Maud Cotter describes as ‘a spiral, a whirling stream.’

She adds ‘this phenomenon I see as an expression of the nature of change, a complex form which expands and ingests space; a dual directional dynamic, ingesting spent form and offering a different conceptual direction.’

Writer and critic Rebecca Geldard has written recently on Cotter’s practice:

‘In Marcel Marceau’s stage routine, there is a perfectly choreographed moment of suspension that goes unnoticed by the audience, Maud Cotter explains. It serves to amplify the physicality of his feat, the ability to hold sinew and bone in time and freeze imperceptibly. But this is only noticeable in the wings, from where she draws him. Beyond the stage, the interruption of energy, of flow, appears to change nothing but, in fact, changes everything about the energy field. With the muscular elegance of the gymnast or the pervasive creep of a musical score, the slight shift in mood silently alters the parameters of what’s performatively possible.’

‘Interconnectedness, at the molecular level, is the driver of Cotter’s sculptural enquiry; manifesting moments of “imperfect geometry” at the core of where things, beings, ideas and environments meet. Whether daring to ‘draw’ this massively in metal, manufacture it through the placement of pre-existing materials, or orchestrate the essential bits in between, any sense of artistic coercion is only ever, and oh so lightly, custodial, however hands-on the process. Each fixing, inscribed section, loop of archi-graphic script, is allowed to speak with its own energy as part of a quietly insistent ensemble cast, leading us beyond the need for meaning and on towards a collective sense of being in the thick of it – soaring, spiralling, feeling that all things seem to touch so they are.’

At the End of the Day: New Paintings

Some memories resonate over and over and become part of our identity. Often they are just below the surface, on the border of dream and real life. Carol Hodder’s new work continues to mine this in-between state that sometimes leads to change and transformation.

Hodder is haunted by water. Early memories of being in a small boat on the lake with her father anchor her exploration of water, shoreline and edges. Her paintings often contain a sense of ambiguous internal weather, where ideas and experiences brood behind the surface of human experience.

Opening Reception:
Thursday 28 August, 6–8pm

Kerlin Gallery is pleased to introduce Hazel O’Sullivan, with an exhibition of new paintings and sculptures titled ‘Circa Ré’.

Hazel O’Sullivan reimagines artefacts and art objects within an immersive retrofuturist narrative. Her work frequently interpret forts and mechanisms that open gateways to the mythological Otherworld as a way to connect with pre-colonisation. For Circa Ré, O’Sullivan’s sources include medieval and prehistoric objects, illuminated manuscripts, and sacred grounds. Soaking in this trove of archaeological and artistic references, O’Sullivan then manipulates colour, scale and perspective to create architectural compositions that tap into vernacular traditions and mythologies.

Hazel O’Sullivan
b. 1998, Co. Meath, Ireland. Lives and works in London.
Hazel O’Sullivan is a multi-disciplinary artist examining visual discourse from Irish culture. Her work imagines a combination of ancient and future narratives as artefacts, devices and mythological architecture through a retrofuturistic lens. Through drawing, painting, sculpture and curation, she explores symbolic materiality of Irish artefacts, reimagining them as both historical objects and speculative constructs. O’Sullivan has an MFA from Chelsea College of Arts, London (2023) and BFA from NCAD, Dublin (2021).

Recent exhibitions include New Contemporaries, ICA, London; Good Eye Projects, Saatchi Gallery, London and Irish Art Now, Irish Embassy, London (all 2025); RETROFUTURE, The LAB Gallery, Dublin (2024); Harvest Gold, Solstice Arts Centre, Co. Meath; Cladding, with Charys Wilson, Catalyst Arts, Belfast (both 2023).

Exhibition continues from the 14th of August to the 19th of September 2025

Featuring three 5.4m towers from discarded wardrobes—antique mahogany to mid-20th-century chipboard. Once bedroom sentinels, they mirror human scale amid capitalist decay & ecological loss. Charred, their graphite sheen reveals pre-industrial carbon, a silvery breath from past forests, hinting at immortality. From cave charcoal to quantum tech, this graphite, a communication tool, sparks hope via cross-disciplinary dialogue against the ecological abyss. With eco-gothic tones—from toppled dolmens to Space Odyssey monoliths—they evoke a haunting legacy of neglect through architectural resonance.

The Office of Public Works and Dublin City Arts Office are pleased to present a new exhibition of work by Eithne Jordan RHA curated by Margarita Cappock. It takes place at the Casino Marino, Cherrymount Crescent, Marino, Dublin 3, D03 HH70.

The exhibition is open everyday from 10.00am to 5.00pm and admission to the exhibition is free.

About the Artist
Eithne Jordan is one of Ireland’s pre-eminent painters. In this exhibition, Jordan has turned her artistic gaze to the interiors of public and private spaces, such as museums and institutional buildings, which she has visited on her travels in Ireland, France, Italy, Switzerland and the United States. Jordan explores the way paintings, sculptures and artefacts are displayed in these spaces. She creates paintings that are, in her words, ‘emotional landscapes’. Jordan is drawn to exhibiting in unusual spaces where her work can interact with their surroundings as in this exhibition at the Casino Marino. Her paintings reflect her enduring interest in architecture and the interplay that can happen between her paintings and their environment, whether a modernist space or a historic building.

The resonance of this new body of work – most from the last five years – displayed in the rooms of the Casino creates the ‘echo’ of an ongoing conversation with the eighteenth century, which is why the artist chose this as the exhibition title. Eithne Jordan grew up in Clontarf, not far from the Casino. She states, ‘The Casino has an air of grandeur but it also has that sense of intimacy in the beauty of its proportions. It is one of the things that I love about it.’

Funded by the OPW and Dublin City Arts Office with the support of the Arts Council.

New voices in Irish Photography at Photo Museum Ireland

Photo Museum Ireland is proud to announce TALENTS 2025, a major exhibition spotlighting eight of Ireland’s most exciting emerging photographic artists. Opening to the public on Saturday 30 August 2025, the exhibition celebrates the bold, diverse perspectives shaping contemporary photography across the island of Ireland.

TALENTS 2025 features new work by:

Niamh Barry
Ishmael Claxton
Evanna Devine
Sabrina Faria
Roisin Lambert
Ben Malcolmson
Conn McCarrick
Tolu Ogunware

Exhibition continues from the 15th of August to the 20th of September 2025

The exhibition title references the TV series Mad Men; there the ‘carousel’ is a Kodak slide projector that in a sense moves the viewer forwards and backwards in time.

This series of paintings, prints and objects seek to describe a world that can feel familiar and strange all at the same time. Things are always changing. The artist draws on science fiction movies from the 50s and 60s. Colourful paintings of domestic and ‘small town’ settings draw us in with a whiff of nostalgia, a sense of the familiar which is subverted as things are not quite as expected. Photopolymer prints and made objects offer clues that the world we are in has been altered. Flora and other items have appeared nearby. Questions are posed but not answered. The world has changed and we are not quite sure where we are.

Margo Harkin is one of Ireland’s most versatile and respected filmmakers – having directed and produced fiction and documentary films for over forty years. Her work includes an invaluable chronicle of Northern Ireland’s recent political history.

After graduating in Fine Art from the Ulster College of Art and Design in 1974, Harkin worked as an art teacher and community worker in socially deprived areas of Derry. She joined Field Day Theatre Company in 1980 as an Assistant Stage Manager on Brian Friel’s Translations, before going on to work as a stage designer for the company.

In 1984, Harkin co-founded Derry Film & Video Workshop with Anne Crilly and Trisha Ziff delivering critical perspectives that ran counter to the censored narratives then broadcast by British and Irish television. The signal works of this period were Mother Ireland (1988), Anne Crilly’s controversial documentary about feminism and Irish republicanism, and Harkin’s own Hush-A-Bye Baby (1990), a feature drama about teenage pregnancy following the 1983 abortion referendum in Ireland.

Harkin established Besom Productions in 1992 making educational films for Channel 4 but her reputation as an astute, local documentarian of injustices was soon forged through a series of highly regarded television documentaries. Her cinema films, the surf documentary Waveriders (2003), by Joel Conroy (which she produced), and Stolen (2023), about the plight of unmarried mothers in Ireland in the 20th century, provided thoroughly researched, compelling accounts of their subjects.

Margo Harkin is a member of Aosdána. Her work has won countless awards and is widely taught to third-level film and media students.

Spanning over four decades, Harkin’s work has consistently challenged societal narratives, giving voice to the silenced and bearing witness to the social and political upheavals that have shaped the contemporary Irish landscape. This retrospective will span across the IFI’s cinema screens, as well as online via IFI@Home, IFI International and the IFI Archive Player.

IFI DIGITAL PLATFORMS

A selection of Margo Harkin’s films are available to rent for Irish audiences on IFI@Home and for international audiences on IFI International. These titles are now available for pre-order and will be available to watch from Wednesday Sept 3. Film bundles are available for purchase with pricing below.

Titles available on both IFI@Home and IFI International include: Hush-A-Bye Baby (1990), 12 Days in July (1997), Waveriders (2008), Bloody Sunday – A Derry Diary (2010), Far Side of Revenge (2012), and Stolen (2023).

A selection of Margo Harkin’s films are available free-to-watch worldwide on the IFI Archive Player.

IFI Archive Player exclusive titles will be available from Wednesday Sept 3, with The Hunger Strike (2006) and Eamonn McCann: A Long March (2018) available from Wednesday Oct 1, following their respective theatrical screening dates.

IFI Archive Player titles include: NYPD Nude (1995), Clear The Stage (1998), A Plague on Both Your Houses (1999), Looking for Lundy (2000), , You Looking at Me? (2003), The Hunger Strike (2006), Ocras (2006), The Return of Colmcille (2013), Eamonn McCann: A Long March (2018)

The IFI Archive Player is the virtual viewing room for the remarkable moving image collections held in the IFI Irish Film Archive, giving audiences across the globe instant access to this rich heritage.

BOOKING INFO

• Booking via ifi.ie/margo-harkin or by calling the IFI Box Office on 01 679 3477, or in person at the IFI, 6 Eustace Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2.
• The season is eligible for the IFI’s 25 & Under scheme, details of which can be found via ifi.ie/25under
  Tickets to the Margo Harkin: Career Interview will be €10.
• Season ticket bundles available: 3 for €30 and full season pass for €70.
• IFI Membership is required for all films without IFCO classification. If you are not an IFI Member then a membership fee of €1.50 will be added to each unclassified Margo Harkin: Radical Witness ticket price, and/or a Season Membership fee of €5.00 will be added to each Margo Harkin: Radical Witness ticket bundle.
• Films on IFI@Home and IFI International will be €5.99 each, with the exception of the newly restored, exclusive title Hush-A-Bye Baby which will be €7.99.
• A bundle of all streaming titles will be available for €34.

SUPPORT

The titles in this retrospective were digitised and preserved thanks to a grant from Coimisiún na Meán’s Archiving Funding Scheme, which aims to preserve content recorded for broadcast on radio or television. The restoration of Hush-A-Bye Baby (1990) from original 16mm elements has been created by the IFI Irish Film Archive for IFI’s Digital Restoration Project funded by Screen Ireland/Fís Éireann and supported by A Season of Classic Films an initiative of ACE – Association des Cinémathèques Européennes supported by the EU Creative Europe MEDIA programme.

The IFI Archive Player is developed with the support and partnership of Axonista.

The IFI acknowledges the support of the Arts Council.

Closing Launch on Wednesday 24th September 7pm.
This is a new body of work that merges abstract ink landscapes with darkroom experimentation. Moving Mountains includes chemigrams, chemograms, and salt etching pieces, created using resists and natural plant-based chemistry. These works engage with the local Irish landscape in a poetic, intuitive, and materially sensitive way. Through her practice, Greta offers a counter-narrative to the pace and noise of contemporary life inviting viewers to embrace the unknown, slow down, reconnect with the natural world, and find presence in the in-between.
No Booking Required

Sculpture in Context Celebrates 40 Years at the National Botanic Gardens, Dublin

Ireland’s largest and longest-running sculpture exhibition, Sculpture in Context, proudly celebrates its 40th anniversary at the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin from Thursday 4th September to Friday 10th October 2025.

Much beloved by the public, Sculpture in Context is a pivotal event in the Irish arts calendar. Over the last four decades the unique presentation of ambitious and contemporary three-dimensional work by leading creative talent, has provided the public with memorable experiences. Sculpture in Context is the largest and longest running sculpture exhibition in Ireland, giving free access to an annual audience of over 100,000.

The exciting range of sculptures to be presented were selected from over 500 entries submitted via open call. The selection of the exhibits was made by a panel of three independent fellow sculptors. Selected artists include Róisín De Buitléar, Ester Barrett, Fiona Smith, Alva Gallagher, Ayelet Lalor, Ray Delaney, Helen Merrigan Colfer, amongst others.

As part of the anniversary celebration, the exhibition also welcomes several distinguished invited artists. Among them are Eilis O’Connell, Alison Kaye, Ken Drew, Ana Duncan, Seamus Gill, Beatrice Stewart, Ciaran Patterson, Penny Lacey, Michelle Maher, and Richard Healy, whose contributions further enrich this 40th anniversary exhibition.

Sculpture in Context will run from Thursday 4th September to Friday 10th October; is free to visit and all are welcome. The National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin will be open 9.00am to 5.00pm on weekdays and 10.00am to 6.00pm on Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays.

Sculpture in Context is a non-profit voluntary organisation and is proceeding this year owing to the goodwill and support of OPW, private sponsorship and personal donations. Sculpture in Context extends heartfelt thanks to the many artists who applied this year and to all those who have contributed to its success over the past 40 years.

VISITOR INFORMATION

Dates: 4th September – 10th October 2025
Venue: National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin 9
Opening Hours:

Weekdays: 9.00am – 5.00pm
Weekends & Bank Holidays: 10.00am – 6.00pm
Admission: Free – All are welcome

Helen Blake is a painter whose practice focuses on colour, engaging with rhythm and formalism, chance and deliberation. Using a working method where process and contemplation guide the evolution of the work, her overtly hand-made paintings record and examine colour conversations within accumulating pattern structures, embracing accidents, flaws and discrepancies within their rhythms.

Andrew Wilson, former Curator of Modern and Contemporary British Art at Tate Britain, has written of Blake’s work that is underpinned by process – “always variously methodical and rational, yet also absurd and affected by the interruption of chance. In Blake’s paintings, colour is deployed to follow a given order and yet these are paintings of nature ….. not the rigid order of an urban modernism, but the texture and rhythms, and immediacy of life unfolding”.
As well four solo exhibitions at the Molesworth Gallery, Blake has shown at the RHA in FUTURES (2014), FUTURES Anthology (2015) and as part of ‘In and of itself – Abstraction in the age of images’ (2022). She was included in ‘Generation 2022: New Irish Painting’ at the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, and received the Highly Commended award at the Contemporary Bristish Painting Prize (2022) . Her work has been acquired by the Arts Council of Ireland and by the OPW for the State Collection.

A celebration to mark the gallery’s 30th birthday! A specially selected exhibition of artworks by Irish and international artists who have exhibited at this Dublin gallery over the last 30 years.

Participating artists include: Basil Blackshaw, Cecilia Bullo, Anthony Caro, Sandro Chia, Peter Cleary, David Crone, Enzo Cucchi, Alan Davie, Vivienne Dick, Terry Frost, Sheenagh Geoghegan, John Gibbons, Patrick Graham, Patrick Hall, Claire Halpin, Marcelle Hanselaar, John Hoyland, Jonathan Hunter, Eithne Jordan, Eddie Kennedy, Alicia Ruiz Lopez, Nick Miller, Kevin Mooney, Paul Mosse, Gwen O’Dowd, Eamon O’Kane, Larry Poons, Tim Scott, John Noel Smith, George Warren, Michael Warren, Karl Weschke, Orla Whelan…

The Horse is excited to share the solo exhibition SLIPPERY LIKE MANGO JUICE by Dublin based, Swedish born artist Ella Bertilsson. The show is a survey of recent work that draws us through her exploration of aesthetics and attachment to objects, actions and vignettes, drawn from life experiences.

Preview: 4th of September, 6-9 pm.
Gallery opening hours: 2-6 pm, Mon-Wed, or by appointment.

Taylor Galleries is pleased to present Matters Arising, an exhibition of new work by Charles Tyrrell.

In reflecting on the exhibition title, Tyrrell notes: “I am simply paying homage to what I’ve realised is a constant throughout my painting life. It happens at every level… dealing with matters arising; the continuous process of reaction to preceding moves.”

The exhibition centres on ten new paintings that continue Tyrrell’s exploration of distorted grids — mapping, celebrating, and expanding on ideas of how a cohesive whole can emerge from random and disparate elements. Alongside these works, the exhibition includes a selection of new drawings, three new drypoint prints, and a towering timber wall-piece that fuses minimalist modular thinking with the transformative mark of fire.

the soft fall of land
5 – 27 September 2025

Curated by Ciara Hickey

Preview: Thursday 4 September 2025 from 6 – 8 pm at The Library Project, 4 Temple Bar, Dublin 2.

Featuring selected BCPS and invited artists: Bassam Issa Al-Sabah, Sighle Bhreathnach-Cashell, Chloe Brenan, Aisling Conroy, Grace Ryan, Soft Fiction Projects

Black Church Print Studio is delighted to present the soft fall of land curated by Ciara Hickey.

This exhibition brings together new work by Bassam Issa al-Sabah, Sighle Bhreathnach-Cashell, Chloe Brenan, Aisling Conroy, Grace Ryan and Soft Fiction Projects. It considers the idea of Utopia and examines the pursuit of this imagined, impossible and aspirational state from a range of perspectives. The artworks in the exhibition oscillate between escapism and activism, fantasy and instruction for creating an alternative, better world.

Sighle Bhreathnach-Cashell and Bassam Issa al-Sabah have each made a new series of prints directing us into dense, imagined worlds, created from a personal lexicon of symbols drawn from the artists’ history, experience and critical response to the humanitarian, social and ecological issues pervading contemporary life.

Al-Sabah’s monochromatic prints, made during his Process Residency at Black Church Studios, evoke imagery from his moving image works and installations, where sublime, seductive digital landscapes offer speculative worlds in which dystopian and utopian scenarios meet and intersect. Bhreathnach-Cashell, known for her immersive installations and activist work has created a new series of aquatint etchings, ‘Ulster Cycles’. The work translates years of the artist’s unseen drawings and depict mimetic figures using Celtic, biological and architectural imagery, conjuring contemporary fables and cautionary tales.

For Grace Ryan and Chloe Brenan, two studio members at Black Church Print Studio, the invitation to think about Utopian ideals led them to a close examination of the natural world. Ryan will create a sculptural composition in the gallery based on Ikebana—the ancient Japanese art of flower arrangement rooted in balance, asymmetry, and the harmony between humans and nature.

Chloe Brenan’s current work is focused on the microcosm of an orchard in Carlow that is located beside her family home. Originally created as a colonial project to order and control the land, the orchard is now overgrown, the traces of colonial past are muted by the unabetted growth of weeds and shrubs over decades. The artist has used Super 8 photography to mark the process of observing the orchard and acknowledging the small changes and diversity of plant life as dictated by time, climate and chance. Brenan’s work in this exhibition represents the first and last frames of a roll of film on which she photographed the orchard, the edges of which are singed, capturing the moment that an image is simultaneously created and extinguished.

Black Church Print Studio member Aisling Conroy continues her exploration of sound and cymatics, the study of vibrational phenomena. This new work comprises a grid of 40 prints representing the 40 Chladni plates, a methodology developed by Ernst Chladni in 1787 as a visual manifestation of sound vibrations, looking at the patterns produced by sounds on flat plates made by a bow. The work offers an invitation to think about the invisible forces that shape our reality and consider the possibilities of new languages and systems for understanding and grappling with the unknown.

Soft Fiction Projects (Alessia Cargnelli and Emily McFarland) are an initiative that produce printed and digital matter to explore archives of underrepresented voices, oppositional histories and geopolitical narratives. For the exhibition they have produced a free print that can be taken by visitors. The print is based on Women’s News, a Belfast collective-run publication active between 1984 and 2011, who used the medium of print matter as a method for generating common ground, sharing experiences and encouraging community building. This leaflet uses DIY approaches to archival material, collected from MayDay Rooms, as a way to reimagine and revisit this history.

Exhibition continues until Saturday 27 September 2025.
Opening hours: Mon – Fri 11 am – 6 pm, Sat 12 – 6 pm.
Late Opening for Culture Night: Fri 20 Sept. 2025. Open until 9 pm.

Curated by Francis Halsall and Belinda Quirke

Of Peras and Apeiron is a group exhibition of artists who explore systematic processes as an inherent part of their practice. Halsall and Quirke have curated a selection of work that explores the different numerical, geometrical and methodical systems that can be used to make art. They have found artists who both explore the potential of the infinite and unbounded (Aperion) whilst acknowledging they will always be bound by limits (Peras). The resulting work reveals approaches that are mathematical and rational, fictional and personal whilst exploring the deep creativity of systems made by humans and other agents.

Gerard Caris (Nederlands) devoted his arts practice to endless applications of what he termed pentagonism in drawing, print and sculpture.

Channa Horwitz’s (US) extraordinary system of notation, Sonakinatography embeds colour, sound and motion into unparalleled logic scores. Working methodically on common US graph paper with eight squares to the inch, Horwitz’s Sonakinatography allows the artist to “see time visually”, and create a universal notational language for creative interpretation.

Roy Johnston’s (NI) work of the late sixties to early eighties, employs rigorous Pythagorean rationalism and colour permutation both in sculptural form and 2D relief. Neil Clements (NI/Scotland) sets the year 1968 as a control method in deference to Johnston’s “Systems”. Facsimiles of abstract paintings characterised as peripheral to central art historical narratives are recreated by the artist in tread plate. Ronnie Hughes (IRE) memetic paintings thwart mathematical exactitudes through symmetrical slippages that optically and somatically perplex the viewer.

The grid is often referenced in Grace McMurray’s (NI) practice as both a tool, and framing device to the quiet, hidden fabrication of gendered labour. McMurray uses drawing, patchwork, knitting, and weaving within their work, seeking succor in memetic, geometric construction of handcrafted textiles.

Possible Utopian futures are explored in both Dannielle Tegeder’s (US) and Suzanne Treister’s (UK) practice. Tegeder summons the cosmological and the spiritual by means of invented sigils within fabricated urban schematics, whilst Treister’s multi-planetary, fictional persona, and tech futurism frequently allude to the Kabbalistic gematria and mystic systems.

Exhibition Opening: Friday 5th September at 6pm, all welcome

A bent knee at a vaguely familiar stranger
Another known face driving a taxi,
An accent switch when new friends appear
– only to be switched once more when they leave,
Ori on forehead

This series of collages explores how class and race affect how people move through the world, the jobs taken, spaces occupied. Reflecting on the lives of the Nigerian diaspora living in Ireland these works display the oddities of finding a home in a ‘foreign’ land while maintaining, engaging in and creating culture. Family Trees hang over Property Lines showcases the small encounters, subtle gestures and interactions that are kin to Black and Irish people.

Fiyin Oluokun is recipient of the 2024 ‘Emerging Visual Artist Bursary Award’ supported by Kildare County Council Arts Service and Riverbank Arts Centre.

McKenna Gallery
Friday 5 September-Saturday 25 October
Monday-Friday 9:30am-5pm | Saturday 10am-4pm
Admission Free

Congruence: New Works by Emmanuel Matt & Pascal Ungerer.
SO Fine Art Editions is delighted to present Congruence, a two-person exhibition bringing together recent works by French-Swiss artist Emmanuel Matt and Irish visual artist Pascal Ungerer. This exhibition explores liminal landscapes, both real and imagined, seen through two very unique but complementary artistic perspectives. Together, Ungerer and Matt’s works transform the landscape into a site of memory, tension and possibility.

Festival continues from the 6th of September to the 21st of September 2025

Dublin Fringe Festival is a curated, multidisciplinary arts festival and a year-round artist support organisation. We create a framework for artistic risk, offering opportunities for artists to challenge and invigorate their practice, and extend the possibilities of what art can be. We seek out and present contemporary, playful and provocative new work made by Irish and international artists of vision in an annual celebration all over the city.

From form-busting theatre productions, electric dance performance, immersive installations to epic party nights out, every event is curated to ignite your mind and leave an indelible mark on your soul.

Dublin Fringe Festival 2025 takes place from Saturday 6 – Sunday 21 September 2025. 

Exhibition continues from the 7th of September to the 3rd of October 2025

The Olivier Cornet Gallery is delighted to present Eoin Mac Lochlainn’s new solo exhibition:

An ghaoth aniar / This too will pass

“I’ve been increasingly concerned about nature and Climate Change in recent years and, in particular, I am examining the effects of wind and rain on old fence posts. Why fence posts? We humans have been building fences and partitioning the earth for centuries, creating borders and believing that we are in control of the earth…”
Eoin Mac Lochlainn

Opening by Catherine Connolly TD, 3pm, Sunday 7 September 2025.
Poet Geraldine Mitchell to read her poem ‘Keepers’.

Exhibition continues from the 5th of September to the 30th of September 2025

Discover ‘Ink + Earth,’ a month long exhibition by pen and watercolour artist, Alison McEvoy.
After a sell-out show in 2024, Abbeyleix Library will once again host this exhibition for September 2025.
Alison uses pen, watercolour, chalk and oil pastel to create artwork that captures the natural beauty of the bog.
This collection, which marks her second solo exhibition, features her favourite trees and scenic locations around Abbeyleix Bog.
Each piece in the collection provides an intimate glimpse into the landscapes that inspire her, showcasing the weird and wonderful trees on the bog.

Exhibition continues from the 4th of September to the 30th of September 2025

From an early age, Kyrre Mogster has been interested in the details and patterns in nature and everyday life. Born in Stord, Norway in 1985, he lived within a community of fisherfolk until age 7, when he moved with his family to Seattle, USA. His point of departure might be a remote fjord in Norway, but his work glides throughout art history, onboarding the nuance of landscape and society and lands with a vitality and confidence that can only be achieved by coming home after a long and arduous journey.

Exhibition continues from the 7th of September to the 27 of September 2025

In this body of work, Cork based visual artist Ben Reilly transforms the Courthouse Gallery Into an immersive sculptural forest like landscape. Welded and carved limbs stretching skyward and a floating life raft swaying through the gallery all of which are Responding to the gallery’s height and natural light.

Drawing from beach combing excursions around the coastal landscape of West Cork, Reilly integrates found and foraged materials, reflecting themes of reuse and ecological connection. His process – part instinct, part experimentation—blurs the line between control and spontaneity.

In ‘The Sibyls’, Alice Maher presents a series of monumental drawings of female figures entangled in, or twisting free from, vast snaking mounds of hair. At the base of these drawings the artist has placed small piles of highly polished, irregular objects—amorphous forms that resemble great globs of mercury.

The title of the series, The Sibyls, references the oracular women of archaic times, seers who lived apart from society and were believed to channel the prophesies of the divine. In Renaissance art these figures were transformed into biblical prophetesses, pictured holding scrolls or books, as in Michelangelo’s majestic turban-clad sibyls in the Sistine chapel. Maher’s Sibyls are different – rather than resting serenely in the architecture of institutional belief or patriarchal systems of meaning, these Sibyls are altogether more dynamic and equivocal. Their scrolls have morphed into chaotic skeins of hair; their turbans twisted into massive living organisms that envelop, extend from, and consume their heads, while their powerful bodies struggle and strain to impart their portentous message…

…Culturally coded as either dangerous or shameful depending on its context, hair becomes here a visual agent of instability. Are the Sibyls coming into being through this dense matrix of bodily material, or are they caught in the web of their own weaving? Are they rising or falling, emerging or succumbing? The signs are deliberately destabilising; their meanings are as slippery and shifting as the mysterious sculptural shapes tumbled below.’

Extract from an Accompanying Text written by Dr Sarah Kelleher.

A Cage Called Family
A Solo Exhibition by Andrej Getman
Curated by Dino Notaro

A raw and unflinching look at growing up queer in a home that doesn’t always accept you. These paintings reveal the tension between family ties and selfhood, how love can feel conditional, how the place meant to protect can become a cage. Each work tells a story of confinement stretching from childhood into adulthood, speaking to hidden wounds, quiet acts of courage, and the strength it takes to live openly.

Official Opening: Thu 11 Sept, 6 – 8 pm

Dates: 11 – 21 September
Opening Hours: Tue – Sun, 10:30 – 5:30

Scraperboard and Watercolour by Brian Gallagher

Exhibition officially opened by Alan Keane of The Artist’s Well
Thursday 11th September 2025 at 7.30pm

September 11th until October 12th 2025

Viewing Times
11am to 5pm Monday
11am to 9pm Tuesday – Friday
Saturdays 5pm – 10pm

www.bdgart.com

Pallas Projects/Studios are pleased to present Kathryn Maguire—Material Acts, the sixth exhibition of our 2025 Artist-Initiated Projects programme.

A sculptural re-mapping of sacred and ritual geologies.

Maguire’s work examines the ritual and magical possibilities of minerals as deeply embedded alternatives to the comparatively recent regard for minerals as purely extractable commodity.

Red stain oozes out of the cave walls and dries. This substance, Ochre, a ferrous rock, when ground into a powder and mixed with water, saliva, or urine, creates an impressive substance for use on the body or other surfaces. The relationship with minerals began possibly 300,000 years ago. Some of the ochres shimmered as mica or pyrite may have been present. People travelled far and wide, trading the potent minerals for ritual, magic, and storytelling purposes. The material had meaning and was valued. ‘Ochre altered our relationship with the earth. The dead rock underfoot yielded something miraculous, something striking and powerful, something that with conscious intervention could be transformed, and then used itself for transformative effect.’

‘Material Acts’ condenses some of Maguire’s research into minerals, mapping and mining and the relationship to rocks over the centuries. In 1824, Ireland was the first country in the world to be mapped by the British Ordnance Survey; the mapping of Ireland was developed to facilitate taxation and evaluate the ‘Underground Potential’ of geological and material reserves. Mapping was done by triangulation, by creating a series of primary triangles. Sightings were taken between stations using theodolites and light (often moonlight) on specific Mountains. Maguire has used real artefacts from the field, such as surveyors’ tripods, Gunter’s Chains and geological drill core boxes that once housed drill cores of riverine deep strata.

In this installation of large-scale colourful oil paintings, sculptures and plexiglass mirrors Karen Ebbs explores ideas relating to reflection, perception and reality. At the heart of the work is colour, life-affirming and transformative. In a time of ecological and social challenge, Ebbs uses colour as a quiet rebellion against grey apathy to offer hope. Using mirrors, the boundaries between the artworks and the individual collapse. Viewers are confronted with their own reflections as they become interwoven with the artworks. Through this interaction visitors become part of an ever-changing installation which is continuously altered by their presence. This idea challenges the notion of separation and how we perceive ourselves, offering viewers an opportunity to pause.

Karen Ebbs is a Dublin-based artist and a member of Pallas Projects and Studios. She received a Masters in Fine Art, in painting from NCAD in 2023 and was subsequently shortlisted for the RDS Visual Arts Awards. She also studied at the Royal Hibernian Academy School, Dublin. Recent solo exhibitions include Rathfarnham Castle, 2024, Farmleigh Estate, 2022 and the LAB Gallery, Dublin, 2022. In 2022, Karen received an Agility Award from the Arts Council of Ireland and a Professional Development Award from dlr Arts Office.
Our Gallery Learning Programme has lots of workshops, tours for all ages and opportunities to learn more and try different artmaking techniques. See our website for information: www.dlrcoco.ie/arts.

The form of photographic practice has expanded in recent times and the RHA invited artists to respond to the spatial magnitude of the largest gallery in Ireland, with many responding to the open spaces with in-the-round works to create something beyond the typical photo show. Pictured here is: the prosaic everyday made poetic; reflections on both psychic and human-altered landscapes; art documentary; constructed abstractions; observations on borders, invisible and hidden; meditations on sexuality and objectification; the interconnectedness of nature and reflections on Ireland losing its welcoming spirit. Throughout it all, a collage of Irish cultural identity—and our contemporary photographers’ place within it—is revealed.

This exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the RHA’s exhibition department and the artist-led group Island Photographers, who foster engagement with and understanding of photography in Ireland, both in the fine art realm and the broader lens-based culture industry through talks, events and workshops. All eight members are participating in the show.

Laura McMorrow’s paintings draw on found imagery of figures working in the garden, altered landscapes (topiary and hedging), plants, and people enjoying gardens and green spaces.
McMorrow learned everything she knows about gardening from her mother Gillian. An avid gardener and obsessive weeder, Gillian tended to her garden in North Leitrim by making decisions about which plants belong and deserve to self-seed and which become a nuisance. Her approach to gardening was naturalistic and looked effortless, but she was extremely dedicated to her craft.

Out in the garden, in all weather until dusk, it became a form of therapy for her as she suffered with a chronic and fatal illness. The garden became a sanctuary for Gillian and a source of inspiration for Laura who began researching and making work about gardens in her studio practice. Poet and gardener Ross Gay describes time spent gardening as “an exercise in supreme attentiveness”, a trait it shares with painting.

A stop motion animation created using a paint on glass technique is exhibited alongside the paintings. Each frame is hand painted, giving it a painterly and expressive aesthetic. The animation illustrates a quote by the filmmaker Derek Jarman in the book Modern Nature, a journal of his time spent gardening in Dungeness shortly after he discovered he was HIV positive.

The gardener digs in another time, without past or future, beginning or end. A time that does not cleave the day with rush hours, lunch breaks, the last bus home. As you walk in the garden you pass into this time — the moment of entering can never be remembered. Around you the landscape lies transfigured. Here is the Amen beyond the prayer. Derek Jarman.

McMorrow is interested in a personal exploration of the garden as a sanctuary and a space of refuge. However, she is also questioning the complexity of gardening in a time of climate emergency and the futile act of attempting to control and tame nature. The transition to a more ecologically friendly approach to gardening, for example, growing a wildflower meadow instead of a lawn. McMorrow embraces this duality of gardening as a form of therapy and its disposition in the greater context of our time.

Laura McMorrow is a visual artist from Leitrim. She holds a Masters in Fine art from the University of Ulster in Belfast (2012) and she graduated with a degree in painting from Limerick School of Art and Design (2008). Her practice incorporates video installation, animation, sculpture, collage, and painting.
Recent solo exhibitions include The Gardener Digs at The Dock and The Lost Acre at Leitrim Sculpture Centre. Recent community art projects include a collaborative animation project with teenagers funded by Creative Ireland and a sensory mapping project with Leitrim Cycling Festival.
McMorrow is part of the collective, who run an artist-led studio and experimental space in Manorhamilton, Leitrim. Her studio is currently based in the collective space. In 2023, the collective worked together on a collaborative project called Waking the Land that considered environmental grief, supported by the Irish Hospice Foundation.

All works in the exhibition, The Known and Unknown World, have taken a drawing of a five-legged cat by George McCutcheon as their initial point of reference. This work, made in 1996 remains the logo of KCAT to this day. This unusual creature exists at the centre of a sprawling exhibition that mirrors the multi-layered design of a Wunderkammer.

From the 16th century onwards these cabinets of curiosities mixed items from the arts, the natural world, and the sciences to present idiosyncratic views of existence. Juxtaposing local landmarks with fantastical landscapes, common songbirds with speculatively designed creatures, human portraits with extra-planetary beings, The Known and Unknown World invites the viewer to discover and celebrate the multiplicity of ways in which the world can be experienced, understood, and recorded.

Artists featured in this exhibition include: Andrew Pike, Brianna Hurley, Declan Byrne, Diana Chambers, Erin Hacking, Eileen Mulrooney, Fergus Fitzgerald, Fintin Kelly, Jason Turner, Karl Fitzgerald, Lorna Corrigan, Margaret Walker, Shay Croke, Sinead Fahey, Thomas Barron, Mary Cody, Francis Casey, Jack Foskin and George McCutcheon.

Curated by Benjamin Stafford in cooperation with KCAT Studio. This exhibition was first shown at KCAT Art Centre, Callan, Co. Kilkenny as part of the Kilkenny Arts Festival, 2025.

Marianne Keating’s upcoming exhibition brings together two new films that interrogate Ireland’s shifting place within histories of nationalism, migration, and global power. Cad Leis a Bhfuilimíd Ailínithe / To What Do We Align (2025) is a multi-channel film that reflects on Éamon de Valera’s idealised vision of Ireland, its economic stagnation and mass emigration, and the country’s subsequent reorientation under Seán Lemass, as Ireland chose to align itself with Western hegemony rather than the newly formed Non-Aligned Movement.

No Irish Need Apply (2025) examines the experience of the Irish in Britain during the 1970s and 80s, a period when political violence in Northern Ireland fuelled systemic discrimination, surveillance, and social prejudice against Irish communities. Together, these works explore how Ireland has been both the subject of, and complicit in, wider histories of colonialism, migration, and exclusion, revealing the contradictions at the heart of national identity

Marianne Keating is an Irish artist and researcher based in London. She holds a practice-based PhD in Visual & Material Culture and Contemporary Art Practice entitled, ‘They don’t do much in the cane-hole way’, Hidden Histories of the Irish Diaspora in Jamaica, funded by KSA at Kingston University, London and a TECHNE Associate. She has an MA in Fine Art from the Royal College of Art, London and a BA in Fine Art from Limerick School of Art and Design, Ireland. She is currently an Associate Lecturer at the Royal College of Art, London (2020- Present).

Keating was shortlisted to represent Ireland in the 2022 Venice Biennial and has exhibited extensively throughout Ireland and internationally. Upcoming and recent exhibitions include (2025)The Irish Pavilion, World Expo, Japan; The Model, Sligo; Limerick City Gallery of Art, Limerick; Wexford Arts Centre, Wexford, Ireland. Collections include The Office of Public Works, Ireland; Royal College of Art, London; Norlinda and José Lima Collection, Portugal; Zuckerman Museum of Art, Georgia, USA; Palazzo Fogazzaro, Vicenza, Italy.