What’s on in Connaught

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

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

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

Hamilton Gallery’s annual” Winter Gathering” brings you the work of over 20 gallery artists. Opens on November 27th, at 6.30pm. Please join us for this festive celebration of Irish art. This year Winter Gathering Catherine Fanning, Cormac O’Leary, Daniel Chester, Donncadh O’Callaghan, Eileen Healy, Joe Dunne, Joesphine Geaney, Daniel Chester, Paul Colreavy, Mags Duffy, Joe Dunne, Catherine Fanning, Joesphine Geaney, Medbh Gillard, Julianne Guinee, Martina Hamilton, Eileen Healy, Stephanie Hess, Kaye Maahs, Leonora Neary, Marylin North, Donncadh O’Callaghan, Cormac O’Leary, Kate Oram, Pat Owen, Rae Perry, Karen Webster, MaManon West and more

Exhibition continues from 03/01/2026 to 31/01/2026.

Following the success of Connected, a joint exhibition by Elaine Cunningham and Siobhán Moore, held in November, we are delighted to share that the exhibition is now on tour. Connected – Connemara is currently showing in the Visitor Centre at Connemara National Park, Letterfrack.

Together, their work celebrates connection — between people, nature, and creative expression — offering a thoughtful and visually captivating experience. We are delighted with the opportunity to present the work in this beautiful space, set within such a stunning landscape. The setting feels like a natural extension of the themes explored in the exhibition.

Exhibition continues from the 8th of November 2025 to the 28th of February 2026

Jack Butler Yeats (1871–1957) is one of Ireland’s most celebrated twentieth-century artists. The Niland Collection, housed at The Model, holds an extensive body of his work spanning the full arc of his career – from early pen-and-ink illustrations and lively watercolours, to the expressive oil paintings that define his mature style. ‘A Painted Universe’ invites visitors to step into Yeats’s artistic world, where memory, emotion and experience are transformed into colour, form and light.

The Model is delighted to present once more The Sunset Belongs to You – a series of portraits commissioned from two of Irelands most distinguished painters, Mick O’Dea + Geraldine O’Neill. The portraits capture young people from diverse backgrounds living across County Sligo, and were painted between 2022–23. Looked at together, they provide a hopeful glimpse into the Ireland of the future.

Hymn to Him is a guilty pleasure, a sustained glance at the relationship between the unstable and convoluted lives of artists and the composed stillness of the characters they create. In her painting and photographic work, she lingers on the surfaces of things – bellies, primroses, house keys, vegetables. Costello inserts herself into her compositions and, as her own model, she remains in control of both sides of the canvas.

Waking the Land is a collective based in Leitrim. Our five members are Tara Baoth Mooney, Shane Finan, James Kelly, Laura McMorrow, and Sonya Swarte. We collectively occupy an artist-led studio and experimental space in Manorhamilton that opened in September 2022. Over the past three years, we have led events in north Leitrim in response to environmental grief, care, and tending to the land.

Hamilton Gallery’s annual” Winter Gathering” brings you the work of over 20 gallery artists. Opens on November 27th, at 6.30pm. Please join us for this festive celebration of Irish art. This year Winter Gathering Catherine Fanning, Cormac O’Leary, Daniel Chester, Donncadh O’Callaghan, Eileen Healy, Joe Dunne, Joesphine Geaney, Daniel Chester, Paul Colreavy, Mags Duffy, Joe Dunne, Catherine Fanning, Joesphine Geaney, Medbh Gillard, Julianne Guinee, Martina Hamilton, Eileen Healy, Stephanie Hess, Kaye Maahs, Leonora Neary, Marylin North, Donncadh O’Callaghan, Cormac O’Leary, Kate Oram, Pat Owen, Rae Perry, Karen Webster, MaManon West and more

‘Still, We Gather’, brings together artists working across a wide range of mediums to celebrate the social and political potential of coming together, recognising gathering as a practice of care, joy, protest and collective imagination.

Developed through an open call, the exhibition brings together a constellation of contemporary Irish artists whose practices emerge from layered geographies and diverse lived experiences and whose works explore how forms of connection and resistance are sustained and reimagined across borders, cultures and times.

Image: ‘Calling the Bird Ancestors’ (2025), Dervla Baker, Marilyn Lennon & Andy Ingamells

Exhibition continues from 17/01/2026 to 14/03/2026.

David Smith presents Don’t Forget To Remember, an exhibition of recent paintings that explore the fluid nature of perception and memory. The works reflect an internal picture of lived, remembered, and imagined experience, shaped by influences ranging from Zen philosophy and ink painting to abstraction and photography. Carrying the contrasting landscape imprints of Hong Kong and Ireland, two distant points on the Eurasian continent, the paintings evoke a rich interplay of place and perception.
Memories of sunlight under varied atmospheric conditions rise to the surface throughout the exhibition: dawn mist, city air, heavy pollution, sparse for

Exhibition continues from 03/01/2026 to 31/01/2026.

Following the success of Connected, a joint exhibition by Elaine Cunningham and Siobhán Moore, held in November, we are delighted to share that the exhibition is now on tour. Connected – Connemara is currently showing in the Visitor Centre at Connemara National Park, Letterfrack.

Together, their work celebrates connection — between people, nature, and creative expression — offering a thoughtful and visually captivating experience. We are delighted with the opportunity to present the work in this beautiful space, set within such a stunning landscape. The setting feels like a natural extension of the themes explored in the exhibition.

Exhibition continues from 17/01/2026 to 14/03/2026.

Susan Madert presents Interface, a series of paintings set within hotel bedrooms that examine self-knowledge as it emerges at the interface between the individual and their interactions with others. These intimate interior scenes explore moments of reflection, dislocation, and awareness, where private space becomes a site for personal and psychological encounter.

Exhibition continues from 16/01/2026 to 08/02/2026.

126 Artist-Run Gallery & Studios warmly invites you to the opening of our 2026 Members’ Exhibition, Vibrant Matter, on Friday 16th January at 6pm.

A celebration of our members, Vibrant Matter features works by 63 artists across sculpture, oils, acrylics, print, mixed media, photography, and video, responding to the theme of colour as a radical act. Vibrant Matter will run from 16th January until 8th February. 126 Gallery is open from 12-6pm, Wednesday to Sunday.