What’s on in Connaught

Phil Collins
Sat. 20 Jun. – Sat. 22 Aug. 2026
The Model is delighted to present a major exhibition by the internationally renowned visual artist and filmmaker Phil Collins. Over the course of a deeply engaged practice spanning three decades, Collins has realised ambitious projects that shift perspective between the individual and the collective, situating personal experience within broader historical contexts. Balancing intimacy with social critique, he consistently challenges the conventions of documentary representation, creating works that are emotionally charged, formally adventurous and attentive to the poetics of the everyday.

Join us for the launch of The Green Loy at The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon on Saturday 20 June from 2—4pm.

The Green Loy is a celebration of local folk art and culture, grounded in the life and traditions of Leitrim and the north-west. A cock of hay, a loy, and a vividly reimagined dresser form part of a vision that elevates everyday objects into the realm of art.

The exhibition is curated by writer and broadcaster Vincent Woods, ceramic artist Katy West, and dancer and community artist Edwina Guckian.

Join us for the launch of The Kite Ballet at The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon on Saturday 20 June from 2—4pm.

The Kite Ballet by Thaís Muniz intertwines poetic and mythical elements with political, historical, and symbolic themes, amplifying the voices of local activists from the Itapuã area in Salvador, Brazil.

The eponymous film portrays a group of kite runners in their weekly communal ritual, highlighting the threat of private development and ecological displacement of Afro-Indigenous sacred territory, where joy and spiritual practices have thrived for centuries.

Exhibition continues from 01/05/2026.

Andy’s current body of work is about watching a sunset. It is based on people coming together to experience things collectively. The work depicts a group that has convened for the purpose of joy. “The work is based on a scene I witnessed where a group of people sat by a riverbank quietly watching a sunset”.

Andy has spent the last two years making paintings, drawings and sculptures that try to evoke this brief moment in time. The work explores ideas around time, memory, community and pleasure. Andy’s practice combines working in community contexts with making drawing, sculpture and painting.

Image by Cian Flynn

Exhibition continues from 22nd May 2026 to 22nd June 2026

Outset Gallery is pleased to present How Painters Think, a group exhibition by HERmetics_in_the_studio collective opening Thursday 22 May at 18.00.

This exhibition explores the idea of “aesthetic nomadism” within painting, tracing the movement of thought across materials, processes, and surfaces. Each artist works through drawing, collage, printmaking, 3D elements, and found objects before arriving at the painted image, revealing the layered and evolving nature of painterly thinking.
Artists : @louisewallaceartist @majellaclancy @marytkeown @patriciadoherty.visualartist @sineadaldridge1

@hermetics_in_the_studio

Cairde Visual / Hamilton Gallery Award Winner 2025 & recent NCAD Dublin graduate. Root Fall traces shifting boundaries and sites of interruption, where in-between spaces hold material resonance, revealing transformation, tension, and embedded memory.

Curated by Megs Morley, produced by Tracy Bass

‘UnWorlding’ explores wildness, the untamed, the feral and the unruly—not as chaos, but as a force that resists systems of control. Bringing together film, photography and sculptural installations incorporating readymade objects, the exhibition assembles figures, landscapes and sites where this wildness persists: in terrains marked by colonial violence, in the unruly geographies of queer desire, and in forms of life that exceed the boundaries imposed by the human.

Funded by an Arts Council Visual Arts Project Award

Every Thursday evening we host free events in our galleries as part of ‘Gallery Lates’, part of Galway City Council’s Night-Time Economy Action Plan.

Ranging from curator talks, tours, family friendly workshops and multilingual events, Galway Arts Centre has developed a programme aiming to open our doors to more people to experience our contemporary art exhibitions in informal and enjoyable ways as part of ‘Gallery Lates’.

Please see link www.galwayartscentre.ie/whats-on/ for ‘Gallery Lates’ and extended public programme of events for our current exhibition ‘UnWorlding’.

UachtarARTS annual group exhibition is the first show of OCAP’s 2026 Summer Arts Programme. Both OCAP and uachtarARTS are delighted to announce that the guest speaker for the opening night is President Catherine Connolly. The opening is by invitation only.
This year the 40+ members will be exploring how the native language is intertwined with our identity, our heritage and the landscape. Each member will express this topic in their individual manner, also by those born in different countries and who now have made Ireland their home.
The show will feature a variety of mediums and also a number of accordion books created by the groupmembers.

Exhibition continues from 06/03/2026.

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

Exhibition continues from 01/05/2026.

Andy’s current body of work is about watching a sunset. It is based on people coming together to experience things collectively. The work depicts a group that has convened for the purpose of joy. “The work is based on a scene I witnessed where a group of people sat by a riverbank quietly watching a sunset”.

Andy has spent the last two years making paintings, drawings and sculptures that try to evoke this brief moment in time. The work explores ideas around time, memory, community and pleasure. Andy’s practice combines working in community contexts with making drawing, sculpture and painting.

Image by Cian Flynn

Every Thursday evening we host free events in our galleries as part of ‘Gallery Lates’, part of Galway City Council’s Night-Time Economy Action Plan.

Ranging from curator talks, tours, family friendly workshops and multilingual events, Galway Arts Centre has developed a programme aiming to open our doors to more people to experience our contemporary art exhibitions in informal and enjoyable ways as part of ‘Gallery Lates’.

Please see link www.galwayartscentre.ie/whats-on/ for ‘Gallery Lates’ and extended public programme of events for our current exhibition ‘UnWorlding’.

Curated by Megs Morley, produced by Tracy Bass

‘UnWorlding’ explores wildness, the untamed, the feral and the unruly—not as chaos, but as a force that resists systems of control. Bringing together film, photography and sculptural installations incorporating readymade objects, the exhibition assembles figures, landscapes and sites where this wildness persists: in terrains marked by colonial violence, in the unruly geographies of queer desire, and in forms of life that exceed the boundaries imposed by the human.

Funded by an Arts Council Visual Arts Project Award

Taiwanese-American artist Ben Sloat’s exhibition, A New World is Possible, I Can Hear Her Breathing bridges the animist cultures of Taiwan and Ireland through use of materials which transform from raw to cultural states. Employing the respective craft traditions of these countries, Sloat proposes a new kind of syncretism of the handmade: one that blends histories, provides for coalition, and points to new possibilities for the future. Sloat will be working with two local Irish craftspeople, Brid Kivneen for traditional straw and Angela Nolan for willow, in the production of his installation in Gort.

Exhibition continues from 22nd May 2026 to 22nd June 2026

Outset Gallery is pleased to present How Painters Think, a group exhibition by HERmetics_in_the_studio collective opening Thursday 22 May at 18.00.

This exhibition explores the idea of “aesthetic nomadism” within painting, tracing the movement of thought across materials, processes, and surfaces. Each artist works through drawing, collage, printmaking, 3D elements, and found objects before arriving at the painted image, revealing the layered and evolving nature of painterly thinking.
Artists : @louisewallaceartist @majellaclancy @marytkeown @patriciadoherty.visualartist @sineadaldridge1

@hermetics_in_the_studio

A trembling hold, a solo exhibition by visual artist Neva Elliott, opens at Custom House Studios + Gallery on Thursday, 28 May at 6 pm.
The exhibition explores themes of death, grief, and absence, examining how experiences of loss are carried and negotiated over time. Elliott’s practice responds to the transient and often unstable nature of existence — the finiteness of life, and the unpredictability of the world.
Neva Elliott is an artist and writer based in Dublin and holds an MA from Central Saint Martins.
Image: Neva Elliott, From your body II, 2023, Archival print.

The official launch of the Mayo College of Further Education Level 6 end of year exhibition will be officially launched in our upstairs Gallery. The students will present an enriching exhibition of various media created for their final end of year exhibition. The exhibition will feature the work of Klym Bohatyrov, Ella Conway, Laura Coughlin, Luca Doran, Liudmila Haidukova, Áine McFadden, Lily McGinley, Thomas Murphy, Sinead Murray, Francesca Scott, Orla Sloyan, Jurate Tighe, Louise Wilde and Amelia Wrobel. It will be officially launched on Thursday, 28 May at 6pm. Image: Klym Bohatyrov, Tractor, 70x50cm, Oil on Canvas.

Launch: Fri 29 May, 5pm
Inaugurated by Cherry Smyth

Two Singers One Song is an exhibition and artistic collaboration featuring painting and drawing by Jackie Askew and sculpture by Sheila Vollmer. Grounded in their shared language of abstraction, the exhibition highlights the relationship between their artwork and creative processes: ‘Each of our respective art practices is distinct in its unique use of abstract construction, made independently in our studios. Yet, there is a clear sense of harmony in our visual languages that unites our work’.

Cairde Visual / Hamilton Gallery Award Winner 2025 & recent NCAD Dublin graduate. Root Fall traces shifting boundaries and sites of interruption, where in-between spaces hold material resonance, revealing transformation, tension, and embedded memory.

UachtarARTS annual group exhibition is the first show of OCAP’s 2026 Summer Arts Programme. Both OCAP and uachtarARTS are delighted to announce that the guest speaker for the opening night is President Catherine Connolly. The opening is by invitation only.
This year the 40+ members will be exploring how the native language is intertwined with our identity, our heritage and the landscape. Each member will express this topic in their individual manner, also by those born in different countries and who now have made Ireland their home.
The show will feature a variety of mediums and also a number of accordion books created by the groupmembers.

Exhibition launch Friday 12th June 5-8pm.

‘Earthlight’, a solo exhibition by Hemant Rao. Developed during the artist’s 2026 residency at LSC, the exhibition features new works made with dry pastel and earth pigments sourced from Ireland and India.

Responding to the geology, atmosphere, and light of northwest Ireland, Rao’s luminous abstractions present layered explorations of elemental forces, navigating the thresholds between space, form, energy, and perception.Born in a remote village in Madhya Pradesh, India, Hemant early visual experiences were shaped by forests, and an abundance of light, agricultural terrains, heritage sites such as the Bhimbetka rock shelters and Sanchi Stupa.

An current body of work is about Watching a sunset. It is based on people coming together to experience things collectively. The work depicts a group that has convened for the purpose of joy. The work is based on a scene he witnessed where a group of people sat by a riverbank quietly watching a sunset. There were a huge number of people, as though a concert was about to begin, but it was just people coming together to enjoy the beauty of nature.