SIGNALS – a BOOKVILLE EXHIBITION for children and families, 1st to 20th October at the Mayfair Library, Kilkenny
Signals- The Ocean is Never Silent… Have you ever listened to the Ocean, have you heard the stories it tells? Signals is a solo exhibition by artist Linda Fährlin exploring the shifting rhythms of the Atlantic Ocean—its waves, winds, and invisible frequencies. Rather than viewing the ocean as vast space, Signals encourages us to see it as a living presence with its own stories to tell. Supported by Kilkenny Council, Kilkenny Libraries, Creative Ireland, and the Arts Council

SIGNALS – at the Bookville Festival Exhibition, 1st to 20th October at the Mayfair Library, Kilkenny.

Signals- The Ocean is Never Silent… Have you ever listened to the Ocean, have you heard the stories it tells? Signals is a solo exhibition by artist Linda Fährlin exploring the shifting rhythms of the Atlantic Ocean—its waves, winds, and invisible frequencies. Rather than viewing the ocean as vast space, Signals encourages us to see it as a living presence with its own stories to tell. Supported by Kilkenny Council, Kilkenny Libraries, Creative Ireland, and the Arts Council.

Draíocht is delighted to present Sharon Murphy’s Mise en Abyme, which focuses on Parisian carousels and theatrical décor during moments of stillness and silence. Drawing on her background in theatre and informed by concepts from psychoanalysis and magic realism in literature, this work highlights Murphy’s longstanding interest in staged spaces and the performative in photography.

Mise en Abyme was originally commissioned by Nora Hickey M’Sichili, Director Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, where it premiered in 2024. In association with Photo Museum Ireland and Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, the exhibition toured in Ireland in 2025.

FEXA – Fumbally Contemporary, a new artist-led initiative from Fumbally Exchange, presents its first exhibition, Making Space. Six artists working in painting, photography, assemblage and collage: Natasha Conway, Frances Donnelly Jung, Stephen Dunne, Conor Horgan, Caroline McCambridge and David Newton, with a literary work by Patrick Chapman.

Opening Thu 1 Oct, 6pm, with Ali Curran, Chair, IMMA. Film launch at Hen’s Teeth Sat 3 Oct, 1pm. Artist talks Sat 10 Oct, 1pm. Open House Dublin Sat 17 Oct. Finissage Sun 18 Oct, 3pm.

A year following his solo exhibition in 2025, Sol Art Gallery is pleased to present Kevin Mc Namara’s

“From Home to Waterscapes and Grasslands”, his newest collection. From the epic cascading falls in Ennistymon, to the intimate privacy of his home in the West and through sweeping landscapes in the Clare countryside, this collection offers us a glimpse at Kevin’s love of painting Ireland’s Western subjects under the luminous Celtic light that reveal his passion for paint through expressive brushwork and his love of design and colour.

The show runs from the 1st to the 17th of October.

Join us on Thursday the 1st of October from 6pm.

UPLIFT
Desmond Kenny
Curated by Ishmael Claxton.
Desmond Kenny’s work is rooted in colour, material and an instinctive approach to making. Paint, beads, gemstones and other materials come together in works that are bold, tactile and full of movement. The environment where the work is made offers a striking contrast. Walking through Kenny’s traditional working-class Irish home and out towards the back garden, you arrive at the shed that serves as his studio. Inside, the space is transformed by colour, materials and an accumulation of work.
TØN GALLERY
Tuesday to Saturday, 1pm to 6pm D02 KV62.

To see Desmond Kenny’s website, click here.

Opening reception with performance on 2nd October 7-10pm. Then exhibit remains on view at normal hours until October 30th.

Imposter imagines the life and art collection of an illustrious Madame, whose pursuit of social standing and a lasting legacy leads her to obsessively commission portraits of herself.

Avenues into Modern & Contemporary Art
Dates: Saturday 3 October 2026– Saturday 3 April 2027 (excl. 24 October 2026 and 28 March 2027 Bank Holidays)

This series of illustrated art history lectures will look at the diverse range of influences, subject matter and artistic movements explored by some of the most innovative artists from the 19th to the 21st centuries. Throughout the course artworks from the Hugh Lane Gallery’s permanent collection will be among the artworks explored. These illustrated lectures will offer the opportunity for exploring engaging and wide-ranging themes from art history to contemporary visual art practice.

Join exhibiting artist Fiona Kelly in conversation with Dr Declan Long, Head of Doctoral Studies and Co-Director of the MA/MFA Art in the Contemporary World at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, as they discuss Kelly’s solo exhibition Allow to Fallow, Allow to Fall Low at Luan Gallery.
Free admission. Spaces limited. Booking in advance is recommended.

To book, click here.

Kyrre Mogster presents ‘Substance to Shadows’, a body of paintings depicting a kind of hedonism and human folly. Made with ink and oil stick on canvas, the series uses excess, indulgence, and collapse as an allegory for what results from dogmatic thinking — when ideas harden and refuse to be questioned.
The inspiration for the work comes from a series of books by American sociologist Alvin Gouldner that addresses the dangers of failing to confront and interrogate our
ideological biases. For Mogster, Gouldner’s warning becomes visual. The work asks what happens when we stop testing our beliefs against the world.

Wexford Arts Centre in partnership with the Ormston House, is pleased to present Memory of a Free Festival. The exhibition will run in the lower and upper galleries from Saturday, 8 August, to Saturday, 3 October, 2026.

Conceived by Ormston House, the project responds to the Carnsore Point anti-nuclear festivals that took place in Wexford between 1978 and 1981. Organised by a coalition of groups, the festivals were attended by thousands of people. Featuring works by Orla Barry, Brian Duggan and Alanna O’Kelly, the exhibition also includes photos by Derek Speirs and original archival material produced by the Irish Anti-Nuclear Movement.

“Criticism is one artist discerning the secrets of another artist, who understood that something was decided perhaps by the passage of a bird, or a color.” – from Hèléne Cixous interview in The Paris Review, Issue 254

The sculptures and paintings in dove passages are initiated by a sense of touch and movement alongside a sense of sight. For Aleana Egan, painting is imagined as an activity of passage and continuum; an internal language that permeates the artists‘ practice in indirect and associative ways. In this exhibition the compositional power of dreaming is given focus. It’s ephemeral nature, the having and then losing of an area of a pa

Cross//Ways Tallaght Performance Art Festival will take place from 30 September—03 October in Rua Red and at various sites across Tallaght. The fourth edition of Rua Red’s Performance Art Festival turns towards the crossroads, not as a place of arrival or departure, but as a space of encounter.

Curated by Francis Fay and Olivia Hassett Cross//Ways Tallaght is an ambitious four-day festival showcasing the work of nine performance artists, along with the first Livestock Xchange Mentorship Performance Programme, an Xchange performance jam and an artists’ symposium.

For more information, click here.

Join exhibiting artist Fiona Kelly in conversation with Dr Declan Long, Head of Doctoral Studies and Co-Director of the MA/MFA Art in the Contemporary World at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, as they discuss Kelly’s solo exhibition Allow to Fallow, Allow to Fall Low at Luan Gallery.
Free admission. Spaces limited. Booking in advance is recommended.

To book, click here.

Exhibition runs from 17/08/26-04/10/26.

Well known to Irish audiences as violinist, collaborator, educator and Leader of The Ulster Orchestra, Ioana Petcu-Colan’s creative curiousity has opened new doors in recent years. An emerging visual artist, her drawing has featured in exhibitions including both the RUA Belfast and RHA Dublin Annual Exhibition, online and in print.

Refractions invited viewers to experience one sense through another, reframing music as visual art in a collection of memories and references from Ioana’s life as a professional musician.

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.

Pallas Projects/Studios are delighted to announce the participating artists in our Arts Council funded programme of Artist-Initiated Projects 2026. The series will be part of a programme celebrating 30 years of Pallas Projects/Studios. Between January–December 2026 we will present 8 x 3-week exhibitions of new work by:

Paddy Critchley, Fiona Marron, Finn Nichol, Emma Brennan and Thomas Wells, Ciara Rodgers, Struàn Bell, Christopher Mahon, neonatus.exe

Wexford Arts Centre in partnership with the Ormston House, is pleased to present Memory of a Free Festival. The exhibition will run in the lower and upper galleries from Saturday, 8 August, to Saturday, 3 October, 2026.

Conceived by Ormston House, the project responds to the Carnsore Point anti-nuclear festivals that took place in Wexford between 1978 and 1981. Organised by a coalition of groups, the festivals were attended by thousands of people. Featuring works by Orla Barry, Brian Duggan and Alanna O’Kelly, the exhibition also includes photos by Derek Speirs and original archival material produced by the Irish Anti-Nuclear Movement.

Butler Gallery, in association with Kilkenny Arts Festival, is delighted to present a building- wide exhibition honouring the work of the late Tony O’Malley (1913-2003) and Jane O’Malley (1944-2023). This expansive exhibition marks the receipt of the bequest of both artists’ estates by Jane O’Malley to Butler Gallery where the artists had a long association.

See full details on our website.

Exhibition runs from 17/08/26-04/10/26.

Well known to Irish audiences as violinist, collaborator, educator and Leader of The Ulster Orchestra, Ioana Petcu-Colan’s creative curiousity has opened new doors in recent years. An emerging visual artist, her drawing has featured in exhibitions including both the RUA Belfast and RHA Dublin Annual Exhibition, online and in print.

Refractions invited viewers to experience one sense through another, reframing music as visual art in a collection of memories and references from Ioana’s life as a professional musician.

“Criticism is one artist discerning the secrets of another artist, who understood that something was decided perhaps by the passage of a bird, or a color.” – from Hèléne Cixous interview in The Paris Review, Issue 254

The sculptures and paintings in dove passages are initiated by a sense of touch and movement alongside a sense of sight. For Aleana Egan, painting is imagined as an activity of passage and continuum; an internal language that permeates the artists‘ practice in indirect and associative ways. In this exhibition the compositional power of dreaming is given focus. It’s ephemeral nature, the having and then losing of an area of a pa

Inspired by artist Martina McDonald’s journey to Antarctica, this exhibition invites visitors to discover the icy landscapes and remarkable wildlife that she encountered over 17,000km from her home in Co. Kildare. Featuring original photography and hands-on creative activities, the exhibition celebrates the beauty and wonder of the frozen continent. Visitors of all ages are encouraged to explore, create, and let their imaginations wander.

One of the exhibition highlights is Martina’s recent engagement project with the Shackleton Experience and Riverbank Arts Centre – 120+ original prints created by school children from across the county.

“We do not care for what we do not know, and on the whole we do not know what we cannot name.” Robert Mcfarlane, 2015 

The works in this exhibition are inspired by Róisín Lewis’s bicycle journeys through the Irish landscape. During the summer, she is struck by the diversity of wildflowers she encounters.

On her travels, Lewis wears a small field recorder. To distract herself from the effort of cycling, she tests her botanical knowledge by naming out-loud each species that she passes. The breathless determination captured in her voice recordings, highlights the physical effort of climbing hills. The mental effort of recalling the names of flowers as she comes back downhill at speed is also clear.

As she listens back to her recordings, what appears in her mind’s eye are not intricate botanical forms, but sequences of bright colours unfolding like a woven cloth. Lewis has experimented with ways of making textiles from plant fibres using traditional techniques such as twisting, looping and weaving. These slow, repetitive processes are comparable to the rhythms of the body moving through the landscape.

Opening times:

Monday – Thursday: 10am – 8pm

Friday and Saturday: 10am – 5pm

Sunday : 12 noon – 4pm 

Gallery closed from Saturday to Monday on Bank Holidays. 

Image credit: Steps, 2025, Róisín Lewis. Photo: Lee Welch

Kyrre Mogster presents ‘Substance to Shadows’, a body of paintings depicting a kind of hedonism and human folly. Made with ink and oil stick on canvas, the series uses excess, indulgence, and collapse as an allegory for what results from dogmatic thinking — when ideas harden and refuse to be questioned.
The inspiration for the work comes from a series of books by American sociologist Alvin Gouldner that addresses the dangers of failing to confront and interrogate our
ideological biases. For Mogster, Gouldner’s warning becomes visual. The work asks what happens when we stop testing our beliefs against the world.

The aphotic is the dark where no light reaches. Carlingford Lough has its own kind of dark; sediment-thick, tidal, closing over quickly. Drawing on the lough’s marine science, Suzanne Carroll paints its unseen depths in oil and encaustic, makes her own pigment from its shore, and catalogues what the tide leaves behind. Gathered and cared for, then catalogued and classified with AI, each object asks the same question: what did this cost, and how did it get here?

As part of the 20th anniversary celebrations of Solstice Arts Centre, The First Frontier was the Horizon showcases the work of many emerging and established contemporary artists originating from County Meath. This expansive group exhibition includes a wide range of artists with a previous connection to Solstice Arts Centre and demonstrates the evolving multi-disciplinary practices emerging from the region, reflecting the breadth of visual inquiry through a selection of painting, photography and sculptural installation.

Exhibition runs 19/09/26-24/10/26.

Sister Weather is the latest instalment in The Glenkeen Variations exhibition series at the Goethe-Institut in Dublin. The exhibition brings together artists Susanne Bürner, Ines Kaag, Annette Kelm and Alexandra Leykauf in the Return Gallery at Goethe-Institut Irland. Drawing on their shared experience of Glenkeen Garden in West Cork, they transform the exhibition space into a car boot sale inspired by the Irish market tradition as a place of encounter, exchange and storytelling. Through photography, sculpture, video and installation, the exhibition interweaves observations of landscape, weather and everyday culture.

Curated by Dr. Margarita Cappock

The End, Once More is a solo exhibition by Tamsin Snow, curated by Margarita Cappock for The LAB Gallery, Dublin. Bringing together new and existing works across sculpture, photography and CGI animation, the exhibition explores cycles of obsolescence, repetition and renewal, and the increasingly unstable relationship between physical objects and their digital representations.

Cross//Ways Tallaght Performance Art Festival will take place from 30 September—03 October in Rua Red and at various sites across Tallaght. The fourth edition of Rua Red’s Performance Art Festival turns towards the crossroads, not as a place of arrival or departure, but as a space of encounter.

Curated by Francis Fay and Olivia Hassett Cross//Ways Tallaght is an ambitious four-day festival showcasing the work of nine performance artists, along with the first Livestock Xchange Mentorship Performance Programme, an Xchange performance jam and an artists’ symposium.

For more information, click here.