What’s On around Ireland

Three of my sculptures selected for Eco Aware Art Gallery ® Art Gallery
Our Vision Is To Reduce Waste In world through Art. We promote Artwork Made by Waste ,Recycle , And Found Material.

https://visit.virtualartgallery.com/ecoawareartgallery

This gallery exhibition centers on the textile installation by artist Varvara Keidan Shavrova, born in Soviet Russia and now living in England and Ireland. The installation features eight screen-printed felt blankets, each depicting images from her family photo album. This social and performative artwork invites interaction: visitors are encouraged to touch the blankets or drape them over their shoulders.

Juxtaposed with the artwork are historical objects from the Documentation Centre’s collection, including a tablecloth from East Prussia, a bedspread from Bohemia, and a small table cover from Brandenburg.

Textiles such as blankets, tablecloths, handkerchiefs, traditional costumes, coats, cloaks, scarves, and throws are poignant witnesses to hardship and suffering. They serve as relics of loss and deprivation, embodying the deeply human desire to connect with warmth, familiarity, and family. These objects offer a sense of solace against the painful experiences of displacement, loneliness, and uprootedness.

Varvara Keidan Shavrova’s work speaks to these shared experiences of millions of refugees, displaced persons, and emigrants, resonating with their enduring stories.

Exhibition Dates: February 2- November 16, 2025

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 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.

Exhibition continues 25th March – 1st November 2025.

Jack Butler Yeats; The Dreaming Road
Tue. 25 Mar. – Sat. 1 Nov. 2025

The Dreaming Road presents audiences with the opportunity to trace Jack Butler Yeats’ extraordinary journey as an artist through four important, interconnected stages of his life and work. The show touches on the legacy of his unique artistic family, as well as the indelible influence of his early life in Sligo on his entire career. A selection of his politically charged paintings of the 1920s are on view alongside a number of the great masterpieces of his later years, which are noted for their wildly romantic and expressionistic style. While Jack was notably reluctant to discuss his creative practice, the exhibition is augmented with a number of statements by the artist himself that shed light on aspects of his attitudes and approaches to painting.

The Yeats Family was one of the most creative and accomplished in the literary and cultural world of early twentieth century Ireland. Patriarch, John Butler Yeats was distinguished as an artist, and particularly noted for his work in portraiture. Jack’s three siblings William, Susan, Elizabeth made significant contributions to literature, publishing and education throughout their lifetimes. Their mother, Susan Pollexfen, was the daughter of a wealthy Sligo merchant family, and imbued in her children a deep love for the people, landscape, and mythology of the county.

Jack Butler Yeats remains one of Ireland’s best loved and most accomplished artists. Unlike his siblings, Jack was sent to his maternal grandparents in Sligo, where he lived between the ages of eight and 16 years. He cut his creative teeth on the deep experience of Irish life he encountered in the town, and its western characters and dramatic landscape populated his works until the end of his life. While his subject matter remained the same throughout his long career, his style of painting, and the meaning he gave his works changed over time. His initial depictions of western life was marked by a strong sentimentality, which he expressed in watercolours during the period 1898–1910. This gave way, in his early oil period (1910–1925), to the pronounced realism that he developed to make political and social commentary.

Jack had been on a visit back to Sligo in 1898, when he witnessed some of the centenary re-enactments of the 1798 Rebellion. The spectacle of the event appealed to Jack’s love of the drama of everyday life, and he was inspired to create one of his first political scenes, Robert Emmet – Procession at Carricknagat, Co. Sligo, 1898. The more serious concern of Ireland’s nationhood that the centenary celebrations brought to the fore, also impacted the young artist. From 1898 onwards he became more convinced of the right to Irish self-determination. He went on to paint several, more overtly political works, some of which are also on view in this exhibition, culminating in the masterworks The Funeral of Harry Boland, 1922, and Communicating with Prisoners, c. 1924.

From the 1920s and into the later part of his career, another more marked development took hold. Jack’s subject matter became imbued with a deeper mysticism and symbolism. His handling of paint became much freer, he abandoned his palette and brush, and worked directly onto the canvas using only the primary colours. Throughout the 1940s, his paintings increasingly present us with apocalyptic visions. He developed a highly personal technique, which placed less emphasis on composition. He focused more on creating work in a ‘stream-of-consciousness’ style and termed the paintings he made in this way as ‘happenings’.

The exhibition continues until 1st November. In depth Curator’s Tours will run on each Saturday at 11am throughout June, July and August, and can be booked at the front desk or at www.themodel.ie.

We keep all of our exhibitions free of charge and open to everyone. We kindly ask that those who can afford to, make a donation of €5 for this exhibition. This can be done by contactless payment at the station in this gallery.

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

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).

‘Art in Motion’ Exhibition to Open at Baile Mhuire Day Centre.

Tralee Art Group is delighted to announce their latest collaborative exhibition, ‘Art in Motion’, which will be officially opened on Tuesday, June 17th at 2.30pm at Baile Mhuire Day Centre, Balloonagh, Tralee. The opening will be led by special guest Paddy Garvey, Chairperson of Baile Mhuire, and all are welcome to attend. Guests can enjoy an afternoon of art, music and refreshments in a warm and inclusive setting.

This special exhibition is the result of a unique collaboration between members of Tralee Art Group and the clients of Baile Mhuire Day Centre, showcasing the creative energy and expression of both groups. Featuring a variety of works in different media, styles and subjects, Art in Motion celebrates movement, creativity, and community spirit.

TAG is committed to enriching the cultural life of Tralee and surrounding areas. The group regularly holds exhibitions, workshops, and community projects, and has built strong relationships with local organisations—including an ongoing volunteering partnership with Baile Mhuire.

This exhibition reflects that partnership, with art created not only by TAG members but also by clients of the Day Centre who engage weekly in creative workshops facilitated by the group volunteers from Tralee Art Group. The result is a joyful and inspiring collection of artworks, each piece telling its own story of imagination, connection, and collaboration.

All are welcome to attend the opening and celebrate this uplifting display of artistic expression in our community. The exhibition will run for a year and be available to the public weekdays between 4pm and 5pm.

The Great Book of Ireland is an extraordinary vellum manuscript which contains the original work of 120 artists, 140 poets and nine composers.

All of the contributors were asked one thing – please convey your hopes, joys, fears, loves in being an Irish person at the turn of the second millennium. Described by former president, Mary Robinson, as “the Book of Kells of the second millennium”, artists and writers who contributed include Samuel Beckett, Eavan Boland, Cecily Brennan, Louis le Brocquy, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Barrie Cooke, Dorothy Cross, Daniel Day-Lewis, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Seamus Heaney, Eithne Jordan, Michael Longley, John Montague, Tony O’Malley, Kathy Prendergast, and Patrick Scott.

Visitors will have the opportunity to view the original manuscript as well as to use a digital touchscreen to turn the pages and explore the exceptional range of artistic practices brought together in this unique cultural artefact.

Visitors will have the opportunity to view the original manuscript as well as to use a digital touchscreen to turn the pages and explore the exceptional range of artistic practices brought together in this unique cultural artefact.

The Great Book of Ireland is supported by The Arts Council Ireland, University College Cork, and private philanthropy through Cork University Foundation.

Sara Flynn, Sueharu Fukami, Shihoko Fukumoto, Joe Hogan, Eiko Kishi, Frances Lambe, Deirdre McLoughlin, O’Donnell + Tuomey, Satoru Ozaki, Sean Scully, Joseph Walsh, Kan Yasuda, Osamu Yokoyama.

Curated by Wahei Aoyama and Joseph Walsh.

RINN explores the culture of making and its relationship to place and time through the work of Irish and Japanese artists and architects. While each piece is a personal expression of form, their works are united by an immersion in the culture of making. Whether drawing on craft heritage – the materials and skills associated with place – or challenging new techniques and pursing new materials, they all share an intimate relationship with the handmade.

Rinn in Gaelic means place or a point – and in Japanese, the same word means circle, ring or circularity. Joseph Walsh has observed that the meaning in both languages strongly represents ideas inherent in his practice, of place and this moment in time, within a continuous cycle of time.

Presented by Making In by Joseph Walsh Studio as part of the Ireland Japan 2025 programme in partnership with the Government of Ireland, the exhibition premiered in April at both Ireland House and A Lighthouse called Kanata, Tokyo.

The Glucksman is proud to host the show on its return to Ireland.

RINN is supported by The Arts Council Ireland, University College Cork, Government of Ireland, Ireland Japan 2025, A Lighthouse Called Kanata, and private philanthropy through Cork University Foundation.

Libraries of Rest by Ciara Barker.

Opening Reception: Saturday 23 August, 2-4pm.

Libraries of Rest by Ciara Barker is an immersive exhibition that invites visitors to imagine the future of restful spaces and practices. Libraries of Rest combines installation, gameplay, sound and light, inhabiting a space between visual art, immersive environment and critical theory, centered on collective well-being.

Barker’s investigation of rest as a method of resistance is informed by a number of critical works, including texts by Tricia Hersey, Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, Sonya Renee Taylor and Dr. Devon Price. This scholarship is grounded in its examination of structural inequality and rest as a racial, disability rights and social justice issue that disproportionately affects marginalised communities.

This exhibition is curated by Aoife Donnellan with a soundscape by Mankyy. Image: Ciara Barker, Libraries of Rest at transmediale studio in Berlin. Image: Ciara Barker, Libraries of Rest at transmediale studio in Berlin. Photo by Katie O’Neill.

Diagonal Acts by Marie Farrington.

Opening Reception: Saturday 23 August, 2-4pm.

Diagonal Acts refers to how diagonal lines are seen as ways to connect, divide and move across various places or ideas. The exhibition explores themes of memory, place and connection — exploring gaps, fragments and edges within archaeology, geology, sculpture and staged performance.

The material outcomes in Diagonal Acts are supported by a range of collaborations, and connected by a public programme of generative elements devised to critically engage audiences in person and online, enhancing and expanding participation and access.

This exhibition is curated by Kate Strain with contributions by Liliane Puthod and Laura Ní Fhlaibhín. Image: Marie Farrington, Figures for Lifting, 2024, carved soapstone. Photo by Rein Kooyman.

Exhibition continues from the 13th of June to the 4th of January 2026

An exhibition of rarely seen artworks by internationally important Japanese war photographer Akihiko Okamura, documenting his relationship with Ireland during the Troubles. 

From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, Japanese war photographer Akihiko Okamura (1929-1985) created a powerful and largely unseen collection of photographs in Ireland, both north and south. 

After covering the Vietnam War, Akihiko Okamura visited Ireland in 1968 drawn by the connection to John F. Kennedy’s family roots. A year later, he moved to Ireland with his own family and stayed until his sudden passing in 1985. During that time, he captured everyday life with his family and the conflict in Northern Ireland, known as the Troubles.

Okamura’s photographs have rarely been seen before, and show a unique artistic view of Ireland at this time. What makes his work stand out is that he chose to make Ireland his home. Among all the international photographers working at that time, Okamura stood out for his commitment to the history of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Since he became so closely connected to what he was photographing, Okamura created innovative images in both his own style and how the Troubles were shown through photography. His profound, personal relationship with Ireland allowed him to develop a new method of documenting conflict: poetic and ethereal moments of peace in a time of war.

Akihiko Okamura: The Memories of Others is now open in Art Gallery 4, Ulster Museum. No booking needed. 

The Memories of Others is a Photo Museum Ireland touring exhibition. Curated by Pauline Vermare, Seán O’Hagan, Masako Toda, Brendan Maher and Trish Lambe, with the support of the Estate of Akihiko Okamura, it premiered at Photo Museum Ireland in 2024. It opened in Belfast during Belfast Photo Festival.

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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.’

Page Turners is an exhibition of artists’ books which launches in St Fin Barre’s Cathedral at 5:30pm on Thursday, September 4th.
This autumn exhibition in the cathedral ambulatory invites visitors to linger and spend time exploring selected artists’ books from across Ireland, the UK and France.
Selected national and international book artists include Ambeck Design, Coracle Press, Helen Douglas, Paul Gaffney, Helena Grimes, ottoGraphic Books, Road Books, and Tom Sowden. Editions will be for sale through the cathedral shop.

Page-turners is co-curated with MTU Crawford College of Art & Design and is an important moment at the cathedral as we pioneer a rolling arts programme.

There will also be a panel discussion at the cathedral at 12:30pm on Thursday, September 18th.
The exhibition runs until October 31st, 2025

There no charge to see this exhibition: email arts@stfinbarres.ie to receive your ticket.

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.

OPENING RECEPTION WITH THE ARTIST, CURATOR MEET-AND-GREET, FILM SCREENINGS, AND MORE

“It’s terrible to think [about] where I get my inspiration, but all these things are fodder to me as an artist. I love trees. I love mountains. But I don’t want to go out and paint them. I don’t paint to make money. I paint what I want, and I’ve always been political.”

— Patricia Hurl

For the past 40+ years, the painter Patricia Hurl has portrayed the lives of Irish women and their experiences as housewives, child-bearers, caretakers, providers and warriors navigating a male-dominated world, evoking the broad spectrum of emotions felt by her subjects through expressionistic, layered brushstrokes and blending the figurative and abstract.

As part of Irish Gothic, a retrospective of Hurl’s extraordinary career presented by IAC in partnership with the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), we will be offering special opportunities this September for audiences to engage with the artist and her work, including an opening night reception; a talk with curator Johanne Mullan of IMMA; a members-only private tour of the exhibition; screenings of the documentary Dawn to Dusk, which follows the artist collective Na Cailleacha, of which Hurl is a founding member; and gallery hours for an Irish Gothic theatre installation. Admission is free.

Grief’s Current Shape – a new thread based exhibition by Ciara O’Connor
“If I do leave you, I will have passed on to you something of myself; you will be a different person because of knowing me; it’s inescapable.”
-Edna O’Brien

Grief has seeped into my bones and I suspect it will never leave. But it is so much more than sorrow and despair. It is an ever changing expression of love. We loved them and they loved us. For me, sometimes that love is a rush of warmth when I look down at my hands and see hers.

Sometimes it’s a stab of regret for the hurtful thing I said to him. Sometimes it’s a crumble to the floor when I am overcome by the loss and cruelty of it all. But sometimes now, as the waves of sadness move further and further apart, it is bountiful gratitude for everything it has taught me.

Grief’s Current Shape is an exploration of the various stages of grief, and a personal attempt to lean into it all.

About Ciara
Ciara O’Connor is a Kerry based visual artist who works primarily with textiles and free motion embroidery. Her work is figurative and deals with themes of identity, feminism, trauma and recovery. She is interested in pushing the boundaries of traditional techniques to tell contemporary stories.

Since returning to her practice in 2019 she has been selected for 15 group shows, including Following Threads in Crawford Art Gallery, and RUA and RSA Annuals. She had her first solo show in Garter Lane Arts Centre, 2022, and has featured in FAIRE, Image Magazine, The Irish Examiner, The Kerryman, and VAN Jan/Feb 2024. Her second solo show opens from Sept 6 in Garter Lane Arts Centre.

Exhibition continues from the 4th of September to the 31st of October 2025

In her exhibition, open for Late Night Art Belfast this Thursday 4 September, Alexander interprets Aristotle’s imagining the cosmos as 56 celestial spheres by creating a series of acrylic sketches on linen. Each fragment invites a shift in perspective, exploring in-between spaces, identity beyond the body, and our place in the universe – a constellation of moments that ask who we are, and how we find meaning.

Jennifer Alexander is a visual artist and curator from Scotland, currently based in Northern Ireland. Her practice investigates the interplay between perception and stratification.

Exhibition continues from the 6th of September to the 1st of November 2025

The point of departure for this exhibition was Mandy O’Neill’s recent practice-based PhD, where she examined the social and material implications of housing development and dereliction in the Dublin inner suburb of Cabra. Her research questioned the ideological shifts in housing policy since the mid 20th century in Ireland which have resulted in a move from housing as public good to housing as commodity, with emphasis on the impact of planning. In a broader context O’Neill’s practice is concerned with the politics of space and place, and the power relations which shape our built environment

Exhibition continues from the 6th of September to the 1st of November 2025

Rooted in the beauty of the west of Ireland, The Push and Pull explores the dualities of motherhood – the tenderness and tension, the giving and the grieving, the fierce love and quiet loss of self. Through a series of intimate, textured works, the artist captures the emotional rhythms of raising children: moments of connection stretched thin by the demands of care, identity, and time. This body of work invites viewers into the ebb and flow of maternal experience, where nature, body, and memory collide.

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.

Golden Thread Gallery is proud to present Radical Hope, a new exhibition developed in collaboration with Arsenal Gallery in Białystok, Poland. Curated from Collection II, one of Poland’s most significant collections of contemporary art, the exhibition offers a timely reflection on uncertainty, resilience, and the transformative potential of art.

Collection II, held by the Arsenal Gallery and shaped under the direction of Monika Szewczyk, traces the evolving landscape of contemporary art in Poland and Eastern Europe over the past three decades. Developed as an ‘open corpus,’ the collection is a living archive: dynamic, growing, and responsive to the shifting narratives of our time.

This exhibition is part of the UK/Poland Season 2025 organised by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, British Council and Polish Cultural Institute in London, and supported by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Poland.

Exhibition continues from the 13th of September to the 8th of November 2025

Golden Thread Gallery is proud to present Radical Hope, a new exhibition developed in collaboration with Arsenal Gallery in Białystok, Poland. Curated from Collection II, one of Poland’s most significant collections of contemporary art, the exhibition offers a timely reflection on uncertainty, resilience, and the transformative potential of art.

Exhibition Launch: Saturday 13th September at 12 noon

Based in Sligo, Lorna Watkins is a multi-disciplinary visual artist. She studied Printed Textile Design in NCAD and is a recipient of a Ballinglen Fellowship. Her exhibition Tend/er features painting, printmaking and sculpture exploring ideas around the home, overlooked everyday objects, motherhood and ageing. She often references the body, as life drawing has been a constant in her practice over the past decade.

In 2024 Watkins was selected for the John Richardson French Residency Award and in 2020, JOYA AiR, Spain. She is a recipient of the Arts Council Agility Award; ADI Training Award and Thomas Damann Travel Bursary and her works are part of several public and private collections including the Ulster Hospital and Ballinglen Arts Foundation.

Liminal Landscapes is a two-person exhibition featuring painter Gabhann Dunne and sculptor/writer Theo Hynan-Ratcliffe. Exploring transitions from ecological change to the boundaries of sculpture and writing, Dunne’s paintings respond to the Burren’s ecological narratives and the resilience of the Burren Pines. Hynan-Ratcliffe’s sculptural and written works engage with materiality, feminist perspectives, and cycles of grief and renewal. Together, their practices create a dialogue across nature, identity, and time, inviting reflection on our impact and connection to the earth

Let’s Not Talk About This Now is a solo exhibition of drawings, sculptures, and prints by Peter Nash at Cork Printmakers Studio Gallery which opens on Culture Night. 

Taking the form of an exploded encyclopedia, or chaotic museum exhibit, his visual explorations are open-ended and inherently human; a continuous search for understanding in a rapidly evolving digital age.

Whilst the exhibition aesthetic is influenced by museums and reference books, there are no claims to authority being made. There are deliberately more questions posed than answers presented.

Artist Talk 8 October 1pm

THE SWALLOW, Tadhg O’Sullivan’s new feature, starring Academy Award winner Brenda Fricker, will open in select Irish cinemas from 19 September.
The film presents a meditation on art, memory and solitude in later life, through an artist exploring memories and fragments of the past while trying to make sense of her own unwillingness to let go.

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/marmaladefilms/theswallowofficialtrailer

Tickets available via https://linktr.ee/marmaladefilms

The Swallow was funded by The Arts Council/An Comhairle Ealaíon, under the Authored Works scheme.

Pollanroe Burn or An Pollán Rua – the little red pool – unfolds through a series of new films and archival fragments, forming part of artist Emily McFarland’s ongoing long-term research into the shifting ecology of the Sperrin Mountains of West Tyrone, in the North of Ireland, in the shadow of proposed major industrial-scale gold extraction. The project asks: How can we cultivate modes of thinking that allow intellect and empathy to apprehend the long-standing and delicate connections between humans and their environments?

Launching: Saturday 27 September 2025 at Void Art Centre, 6-8pm

VISUAL is pleased to present Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood. This landmark touring exhibition has been conceived by Hettie Judah in collaboration with Hayward Gallery Touring. Following a successful tour of the UK, Acts of Creation comes to VISUAL augmented by the inclusion of works from Irish artists and collections.

Spanning all of VISUAL’s galleries, Acts of Creation presents work in painting, drawing, sculpture, film, photography and sound that speaks to the experience of motherhood in all its complexity. At VISUAL, an accompanying in-depth learning programme will respond to the exhibition’s themes and works. A reading area, a reflection space and specialist workshops and tours will further provide visitors with ways to engage with the ideas and experiences reflected in this powerful exhibition.

Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood plunges into the joys and heartaches, mess, myths and mishaps of motherhood through over 100 artworks, from the Women’s Movement of the 1960s and 70s to the present day.
While the Madonna and Child is one of the great subjects of European art, we rarely see art about real motherhood, in all its complexity. Acts of Creation addresses this blind spot in art history, asserting the artist mother as an important cultural figure.
How does the image of motherhood change when the artist is drawing on lived experience? What is made visible? What challenges are levelled at motherhood as an institution through which the mother is idealised as self-sacrificing, wholesome, tireless and uncomplaining?
Diverse experiences are explored across four thematic displays. Creation looks at conception, pregnancy, birth and nursing. It imagines motherhood as a creative act, albeit one in which joy might be tempered with anxiety, pain and exhaustion.
Maintenance is dedicated to the ongoing work of motherhood and caregiving in the day-to-day. Here we find artists engaged in domestic chores, keeping children safe, and navigating a balance between art and parenting.
In Loss artists reflect on experiences of miscarriage, adoption and involuntary childlessness. Works in this section also protest the loss of women’s reproductive rights.
The Temple is a series of self-portraits in which artists explore their own identity in relation to motherhood. For decades women were told they could not be both an artist and a mother. These portraits stand in defiance of that idea.

This exhibition features artworks that include nudity and explore childbirth, (in)fertility, miscarriage, abortion, loss and domestic abuse.

Exhibition continues 27 September – 22 November 2025.

“So Nice Day” by the Carrowbeg Artist Collective invites viewers into an immersive dialogue between art, ecology, and lived experience. Created by seven artists with intellectual disabilities, the exhibition weaves natural materials with personal narratives, exploring sensory awareness, sustainability, and our bond with nature. By amplifying diverse voices, CHG&S highlights the transformative power of art, fostering inclusion and deepening cultural conversations around ecology and accessibility.

Exhibition continues 20 September – 1 November 2025.

Gerard Byrne, Artist of the Baggotonia Festival 2025 presents ‘Light Falls: Ode to Baggotonia’, set in his intimate Ranelagh studio + gallery. Byrne captures Dublin’s unique light—the glow between buildings, canal shimmers, shadows folding into foliage. The show features contemplative still lifes, dreamy urbanscapes, and bold figuratives. Reflecting on Georgian streets and the city’s Bohemian soul where Beckett, Behan, and Bacon once walked, Byrne transforms everyday sights into lyrical meditations on light, memory, and place—continuing Ireland’s Impressionist legacy with contemporary insight.

Launch: Wednesday October 1st, 6:30pm

This exhibition explores the connection between voice, self and community. Through the medium of photography, the collective demonstrates the importance that creativity has in conveying current cultural values, legacy for future generations, identity and wellbeing, and the importance of holding space. This exhibition is a participatory experience, and we invite all attendees to bring smartphones and headphones to unlock audio reflections and soundscapes that accompany the photographs.

Carol describes this exhibition as

“This collection birthed as an exhilarating rush of visual stories.  Begun around the mid-winter Solstice they took ragged forms in intense blues, purples, crimsons, with rich bronze and gold. They explore something of the dark and dusks of winter when the dog becomes the wolf”.

Her work is held in private collections, public institutions, businesses and galleries across the UK, Ireland, USA, South Africa and Australia.

On display from Thursday 2 October to Thursday 6 November.

Read more: https://www.catalystarts.org.uk/nonstick-frying-pan

Norio Ishiwata and Chifumi Ishiwata formed the art unit Orinotawashi after their marriage. Based in Tokyo, they began by creating collage works, working together to complete each single piece. In 2013, they dedicated themselves to art, participating in artist-in-residence programs in five countries: Spain, Italy, Zambia, Egypt, and Morocco. Their travels abroad inspired them to focus on the theme of “art for living.” In Spain, they met Irish artist Mark Redden, whose traditional Irish boat, the Currach, and his artistic style influenced them.

Opening Launch on Thursday 2nd October 7pm
Creative Spark is proud to present Glór | Ciúnas, a group exhibition showcasing new work by artists from the 2024/25 Artist-in-Residence Programme. Featuring a vibrant mix of painting, print, installation, sculpture, and mixed media, the exhibition brings together work by Aoife Cawley, Klowi, Claire McAteer, Colleen Eilís Murphy, Nicola Moran, Áine Dunne, Maria Atanacković, and Eimear Murphy. The title Glór | Ciúnas translating as Loud | Silence reflects the work created by this year’s artists. Some using bright, bold colours to express energy and stories while others create subtle, quiet works that invite you to reflect. Glór | Ciúnas marks the eleventh year of the artists-in-Residence exhibition hosted in an Táin Arts Centre.
The Creative Spark Residency Programme, supported by The Arts Service of Louth County Council and the Arts Council of Ireland, is dedicated to providing essential support to artists.

Sometimes a painting evokes a feeling or a memory that the viewer cannot always bring to mind.

While Laura Butler and Audrey Kyle have very different artistic styles and use different mediums, they share a vision in the sense of being preoccupied with a world beyond the present moment. Often, they are drawn to depicting scenes in the same places but produce their own unique interpretations. Audrey explores through a deep connection with the natural world, a strong sense of the mythical, mystical and folklore. Laura’s pursuit in her landscape paintings is to honour the spirit of the lives of people, and the traces their presence leaves on the landscape.

The exhibition will be on display from Friday 3rd until Friday 31st October 2025, and includes Saturday opening on 11th October. Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 10.00am – 4.00pm.

Opening reception: Thursday 02 October 2025, 6–8pm

Frank Sweeney’s new film, ‘Go Ye Afar’, follows the journey of an Irish-Nigerian taxi driver on a miraculous voyage through the streets of Dublin and Calabar. Using a range of techniques and sources, from reenacted interviews and archival footage to rear-projection and Nollywood-inspired special effects, a series of characters are transported through interconnected sites in Ireland and Nigeria.

Exploring West Cork’s hidden coves by kayak, Bernadette gathers clays and sea-altered debris, which she later transforms through ceramic processes into vessels she calls a claytography of the coastline—tactile notations of time, place, and transformation.
Alongside kiln-cast glass pieces that embody her emotional and physical responses to ocean waters, the ceramics hold the energy, texture, and temporality of the sites they emerge from. Each work speaks to geological time, the impermanence of coastlines, and the fragile balance between humanity and environment.

Exhibition continues from the 3rd of October to the 2nd of November 2025

This show will bring together the work of 34 incredible emerging artists, with more than 55 pieces filling the gallery. From painting and print to photography and mixed media, there’s going to be such an amazing mix of ideas, styles and voices, it’s going to be full of energy and discovery.

The opening night is happening on Friday, 3rd October, 7–9 pm. Bring your friends, come meet the artists, have a glass of wine, and celebrate with us. Opening nights are always such a buzz, and this one is going to be special.

Open Saturday and Sundays 12-6pm (closed on the 18th and 19th)

Exhibition continues from the 4th of October 2025 until the 8th of November 2025

Parallel Lands brings together new works by Newfoundland artists Michael Flaherty, Susan Furneaux, and Kym Greeley, curated by Philippa Jones as part of the international partnership between Artlink (Donegal, Ireland) with CRUX (Newfoundland, Canada). Their works reflect a deep dialogue with the land and sea, revealing how Ireland and Newfoundland, divided by the Atlantic, are bound by parallel histories of settlement, loss, resilience, and belonging.

Exhibition continues from the 3rd of October to the 15th of November 2025.

When Stars Collide is a multimedia installation that reshapes the gallery floor with paths of sand and heaps of gravel, where an array of fallen stars and a decapitated bronze head reside. The head becomes both relic and narrator, voicing its dilemmas and contemplations: the embodiment of the night sky, recalled fragments of memory, inherited beliefs, the body it lost, its disappointments, and its hope, all while waiting… waiting for what comes next. Drifting between analysis and poetry, the head loops back and forth, reflecting upon the spectrum of existence within the space and time it currently occupies.

Exhibition continues from the 2nd of October to the 6th of November 2025

An exhibition exploring domesticity and the home, featuring work from Alex Keatinge and Niamh Hannaford.

Self, pet and a bathtub is a triangle of elements arranged as a composition in this oil on linen painting whose title is also the title of the whole show. 

The bathtub is from my locality at the fields around my studio in county Donegal where farmers arrange bathtubs arbitrarily in the landscape for their cows and bulls to drink from. Once an intimate function in a household now these are curious shapes in open spaces resembling alienation and corrosion on their way back to the elements of metal and earth.  

William McKeown made paintings, drawings, prints and installations that captured the openness and life-enhancing power of nature.
Guided by a belief in the primacy of feeling, his paintings often appeared at first to resemble objective minimalism or the monochrome. Yet they offered much more: nature as real and tangible, all around us, something to be touched and felt.
Each painting is slightly off square, undermining the perfection of geometry, and scaled roughly to the size of the human chest, as if mirroring the capacity of our lungs to breathe in air.

Over the past 15 years, Sean Molloy has investigated and deconstructed the baroque painting canon. Initially, this took the form of portraiture, primarily via the unsettling representation of Philip IV by Velazquez, later leading to exploration of the baroque landscape canon, in particular the works of Berchem, Ruisdael, Cuyp and Wouwerman. From 2014, he focussed on creating capricci, imagined landscapes composited from references in the baroque canon, occasionally including staffage and overlain with disruptive, superimposed and highly-saturated ‘glitch’ elements.

Picasso lived surrounded by his art. His personal life and his work, his homes and his studios were always intimately linked. The exhibition places Picasso in the context of his studios, highlighting the various facets and phases of his art and life. It will explore the key locations that defined him, from his arrival in Paris at the start of the twentieth century to his studio in Mas Notre-Dame de Vie (1961-1973) in Mougins. The exhibition will feature paintings, sculptures, ceramics, and works on paper, as well as photographic and audio-visual works.

Sea Skin features a tactile soft sculpture inspired by the experience of sea swimming and encounters beneath the ocean’s surface.

Drawing from site visits to the islands of West Cork, the textures and colours of the piece reflect the diverse types of seaweed that embrace the coastal landscape.

The installation invites viewers to engage with the textile sculpture, as soft, airy fabrics gently brush against your skin, encouraging tactile exploration through hand-sewn strands.

For her solo exhibition at The LAB Gallery, Ní Mhaonaigh presents a new series of small-scale works that build on the learning of earlier paintings, while chronicling some interesting departures. In tracing a landscape in flux, these works can be loosely categorised into three groupings: canvas studies of organic structures, read as floral, mossy, or tree-like; linear and geometric forms, etched into smooth, silvery backgrounds; and a set of intricate works on board, incorporating vast asymmetrical arcs.