What’s on in Connaught

Gaza Biennale is an international art project that features artists from Gaza, serving as a form of resistance against the ongoing war, destruction, and suffering in Gaza.

International Pavilions for the project have been organised in Berlin, Edinburgh, London, Padua, South Africa, Valencia, Denmark, Istanbul, New York, Sarajevo, Toronto, Washington D.C., and now in Ireland.

The Irish pavilion features video portrayals of artists from Gaza, and an installation project ‘Gaza: A Picture of Destruction’ by Mohammed Suleiman, depicting the destruction of homes in the Strip consequent to the war.

All ages are welcome to explore Roscommon’s creative footprint with a Culture Night Public Art Trail.

Whether you’re a visitor or a local rediscovering the town, this unique trial offers a FREE opportunity to find out more about Roscommon’s Public Art. Featuring innovative temporary works in Loughnaneane Park (in situ for the weekend ONLY and meet the artists opportunity) and the permanent public art collection in the town.

Perfect for families, art and nature lovers, and explorers of all ages.

Join us this Culture Night for a vibrant open-air mural exhibition and evening celebration hosted by artist Harriet Myfanwy Nia Tahany at her rural studio in County Leitrim. This free event will showcase a brand-new series of murals created earlier that day during a collaborative paint jam featuring a mix of established street artists, mid-career painters and creative newcomers.

Enjoy music and refreshments in the Great Hall, meet the artists behind the work, and witness the reveal of large-scale, spray-painted murals that bring a bold urban energy into the heart of the Hidden Heartlands.

Please note: On-site parking is available and the venue is wheelchair accessible (some rural terrain may be uneven).

This event is part of the official Culture Night arts programme, with support from Leitrim County Council and the Arts Council of Ireland.

Whether you’re passionate about street art, curious about mural-making, or simply want to experience something colourful and uplifting this is a free, all-ages event and all are welcome.

Interested in painting with us? Applications are still open for the daytime mural workshop (ages 16+). Learn more and apply by clicking here.

More Info: https://www.myfanwynia.com/events/culture-night-2025

As part of ‘The Air We Share’ exhibition, University of Galway Climate Scientist Dr. Liz Coleman will discuss the intersection of art and science in the exhibition and how the artists’ projects reveal the impact of air pollution in innovative ways. There will also be a screening of ‘The Air We Share’ creative documentary film, by Tom Flanagan.

Free, no booking required

Image: ‘The 9 Freedoms for the Air’ – ‘a place of their own’ (Paula McCloskey & Sam Vardy), photo by Tom Flanagan

‘The Outside Voice’ is a dynamic mix of conversation and live music curated and hosted by electronic music producer, DJ and filmmaker Kate Butler. This event will tell the story of how a century of recorded music has transformed the way women’s voices exist in the public domain, from historic suppression to global stages, through some of Ireland’s most cutting edge musicians. Spanning from contemporary renditions of Irish traditional music, experimental electronic music and innovative hip-hop, featuring Renn Miano, Katie Kim and Ellie Myler, Camiii and Alyxis.

The acclaimed Sligo visual artist and filmmaker screens her second feature film, recipient of the Arts Council of Ireland Authored Works Award. After much time in a mental hospital, Elisa returns to her ancestral home, Stradbally, where she is haunted by anxiety, addiction, and a fractured mind. Under the watchful care of Mary, the loyal housekeeper, Elisa struggles to ground herself as her Doppelgänger emerges, pulling her into a surreal descent. This poetic, unsettling film blurs fantasy, delusion, beauty, and dread. (notes courtesy of Galway Film Fleadh).

Post-show discussion with Cléa

As part of ‘The Air We Share’ exhibition, University of Galway Climate Scientist Dr. Liz Coleman will discuss the intersection of art and science in the exhibition and how the artists’ projects reveal the impact of air pollution in innovative ways. There will also be a screening of ‘The Air We Share’ creative documentary film, by Tom Flanagan.

Free, no booking required

Image: ‘The 9 Freedoms for the Air’ – ‘a place of their own’ (Paula McCloskey & Sam Vardy), photo by Tom Flanagan

Join us this Culture Night for a vibrant open-air mural exhibition and evening celebration hosted by artist Harriet Myfanwy Nia Tahany at her rural studio in County Leitrim. This free event will showcase a brand-new series of murals created earlier that day during a collaborative paint jam featuring a mix of established street artists, mid-career painters and creative newcomers.

Enjoy music and refreshments in the Great Hall, meet the artists behind the work, and witness the reveal of large-scale, spray-painted murals that bring a bold urban energy into the heart of the Hidden Heartlands.

Please note: On-site parking is available and the venue is wheelchair accessible (some rural terrain may be uneven).

This event is part of the official Culture Night arts programme, with support from Leitrim County Council and the Arts Council of Ireland.

Whether you’re passionate about street art, curious about mural-making, or simply want to experience something colourful and uplifting this is a free, all-ages event and all are welcome.

Interested in painting with us? Applications are still open for the daytime mural workshop (ages 16+). Learn more and apply by clicking here.

More Info: https://www.myfanwynia.com/events/culture-night-2025

All ages are welcome to explore Roscommon’s creative footprint with a Culture Night Public Art Trail.

Whether you’re a visitor or a local rediscovering the town, this unique trial offers a FREE opportunity to find out more about Roscommon’s Public Art. Featuring innovative temporary works in Loughnaneane Park (in situ for the weekend ONLY and meet the artists opportunity) and the permanent public art collection in the town.

Perfect for families, art and nature lovers, and explorers of all ages.

‘The Outside Voice’ is a dynamic mix of conversation and live music curated and hosted by electronic music producer, DJ and filmmaker Kate Butler. This event will tell the story of how a century of recorded music has transformed the way women’s voices exist in the public domain, from historic suppression to global stages, through some of Ireland’s most cutting edge musicians. Spanning from contemporary renditions of Irish traditional music, experimental electronic music and innovative hip-hop, featuring Renn Miano, Katie Kim and Ellie Myler, Camiii and Alyxis.

Mairead O’hEocha; Extra Alphabets
Sat. 5 Jul. – Sat. 20 Sep. 2025
Curated by Michael Hill

Mairead O’hEocha’s recent paintings cast an array of extraordinary and everyday tabletop scenes that float in and out from the facts and furnishings of their surrounds: birds invade a garden lunch, an octopus coils its tentacles in a trophy room, a fake loaf of bread sits solemnly at the tenement museum; a blizzard is observed from the comfort of a home workspace.

O’hEocha’s paintings consolidate a variety of recurring themes: how to depict ‘the natural world’ and our relationship with it, sensory encounters and digital space. Extra Alphabets is the largest gathering of O’hEocha’s work in an exhibition to date. The focus is on a group of new large-scale oil paintings, with a number of unseen works, plus a selection from international exhibitions, adding to this overview of the artist’s practice. The exhibition also includes painted interventions that charge the gallery’s walls, bringing O’hEocha’s work into close conversation with The Model’s unique architecture. These painted elements play with the perimeters of the exhibition space, so the cabinets, windows, animals, glass objects, tables and their horizon lines – O’hEocha’s register of motifs – expand, absorb and reflect her approach to painting, and its forms of display.\

Artist Talk
Sat. 5 Jul. 3pm

At the opening of the exhibition Ben Eastham will talk to Mairead O’hEocha about her work.

Ben Eastham is a writer and editor based in Rome and London. He is editor-in-chief of e-flux Criticism and co-founder of The White Review. His second book, The Imaginary Museum, was published in September 2020; his debut novel, The Floating World, is forthcoming with Fitzcarraldo Editions.

The acclaimed Sligo visual artist and filmmaker screens her second feature film, recipient of the Arts Council of Ireland Authored Works Award. After much time in a mental hospital, Elisa returns to her ancestral home, Stradbally, where she is haunted by anxiety, addiction, and a fractured mind. Under the watchful care of Mary, the loyal housekeeper, Elisa struggles to ground herself as her Doppelgänger emerges, pulling her into a surreal descent. This poetic, unsettling film blurs fantasy, delusion, beauty, and dread. (notes courtesy of Galway Film Fleadh).

Post-show discussion with Cléa

Galway Arts Centre is pleased to announce ‘The Air We Share’, a major group exhibition of works developed through a year-long artist residency programme, exploring air quality, climate, and our shared environment through artistic collaboration and community engagement in Galway.

‘The Air We Share’ brings together the work of artists Christopher Steenson, Leon Butler and the artist collective a place of their own (Sam Vardy and Paula McCloskey) who, over the last nine months have worked with scientists, residents, and community groups to creatively respond to real-world air pollution research and lived experience in Westside, Galway aiming to deepen public understanding of air and its critical role in our shared environment.

The exhibition will be officially opened on Saturday 16 August 2025 at 2pm by Deputy Mayor of Galway City Alan Cheevers with guest speaker Annie Fletcher, Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art. All are welcome to attend.

‘The Air We Share’ brings together a consortium of local partners, which is led by Galway City Council and includes Galway Arts Centre, the University of Galway’s Centre for Creative Technologies, the Centre for Climate and Air Pollution Studies and the Insight SFI Centre for Data Analytics, Westside Resource Centre, and Galway Culture Company.

The resulting works featured in the exhibition include; Leon Butler’s ‘Phosphene’ a project that transforms real-time air quality data into sculptural and digital forms, inviting community members to co-design how environmental data is experienced and interpreted, Christopher Steenson’s ‘Where does the body end’ reflects on air pollution and breath through sound walks, writing, and workshops, linking live data with personal and collective experience and ‘a place of their own’ (Paula McCloskey & Sam Vardy) ‘The 9 Freedoms for the Air’ a speculative, collaborative artwork imagining future air rights, developed through participatory workshops with residents, scientists, and legal experts.

The exhibition will be on view from 16 August to 21 September 2025, with a programme of talks, guided tours, and public events taking place throughout its duration. Please see https://www.galwayartscentre.ie/whats-on/thursday-evenings-at-galway-arts-centre/ for more info.

A very special thanks to collaborators Karena Ryan, Alena Postnikova, Gary Stewart and to the participants The Red Bird Youth Collective & all the members of the Westside Community who brought their collaborative creativity to the projects.

‘The Air We Share’ is a recipient of the Creative Climate Action Fund, an initiative of the Creative Ireland Programme, funded by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media in collaboration with the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications.

For more information please visit www.theairweshare.ie

Gaza Biennale is an international art project that features artists from Gaza, serving as a form of resistance against the ongoing war, destruction, and suffering in Gaza.

International Pavilions for the project have been organised in Berlin, Edinburgh, London, Padua, South Africa, Valencia, Denmark, Istanbul, New York, Sarajevo, Toronto, Washington D.C., and now in Ireland.

The Irish pavilion features video portrayals of artists from Gaza, and an installation project ‘Gaza: A Picture of Destruction’ by Mohammed Suleiman, depicting the destruction of homes in the Strip consequent to the war.

Echo/Locate a solo exhibition, by artist Sorcha McNamara, launching in The Linenhall Arts Centre on Friday, August 15 at 5pm. Exhibition runs until Saturday, September 27.
Echo/Locate is a site-specific installation of new and existing work by Sorcha McNamara.
McNamara’s practice engages with deconstructive methods of painting, framing, language and image-making. She repurposes found materials to create lyrical, fragmented compositions that frequently respond to the spaces they are placed in, while questioning personal and conceptual tensions around craft, manipulation, agency and value.
As a process, echolocation is used by certain animals, as well as blind, visually impaired and sighted people, to map or assess their environment. A way of locating distant or invisible objects by making particular noises and paying attention to the sound waves, or echoes, reflected back to them. A way of reading a room, processing spatial information, determining the shape, position and motion of objects. Adapting this notion to the sense of familiarity one might feel in any given space at any given time, Echo/Locate acts as a kind of interlocutor, questioning the ways in which we gauge our surroundings through tangible, sensuous forms.
Navigating this dynamic between space and feeling, the exhibition design was developed in consultation with Aidan Conway of MARMAR Architects. The installation focuses on disrupting and modifying the space using existing gallery structures, as well as dismantling conventional notions of how an artwork is seen, encountered and appreciated.
Echo/Locate is jointly supported by Mayo County Council Arts Office and The Golden Fleece Award.

About the Artist:
Sorcha McNamara is an artist, originally from Co. Mayo, currently based in Fire Station Artists’ Studios, Dublin. Her work was shortlisted for the 2025 Golden Fleece Award. Current and recent group exhibitions include Green on Red Gallery (2025); VISUAL Carlow Centre for Contemporary Art (2024); Catalyst Arts, Belfast (2024); Draíocht Gallery, Dublin (2023); and The LAB, Dublin (2023). Recent residencies include Leitrim Sculpture Centre (2024); Zaratan Arte Contemporanea, Lisbon (2024); Totaldobze Art Centre, Riga (2022); and Tangent Projects, Barcelona (2021). Past solo projects include Fathomless Arms, Ballina Arts Centre (2023); (dis)attachments, The Hyde Bridge Gallery (2022); and Readymade #2, Oonagh Young Gallery (2022). Sorcha’s work has been supported through the Arts Council of Ireland Agility Award (2023, 2022, 2021) and a Mayo Artist Bursary Award (2025, 2023, 2022). She holds an MA in Art + Research Collaboration from IADT Dún Laoghaire (2024) and a BA in Painting from Limerick School of Art & Design (2019).

Signals is a solo exhibition exploring the shifting conditions of the Atlantic Ocean—its waves, winds, and invisible frequencies. These natural forces generate a continuous stream of signals that often go unnoticed, yet they are deeply connected to our environment and health. The artworks in Signals translate these subtle oceanic rhythms into visual form. From the pulse of waves to the patterns of wind, the exhibition reveals how the Atlantic communicates. By making the invisible visible, Signals invites us to reflect on how closely our lives are intertwined with the ocean’s rhythms—and how tuning into these signals can deepen our understanding of both nature and ourselves. Rather than viewing the ocean as empty space, Signals encourages us to see it as a living presence with stories to tell.
The exhibition also features thoughtful reflections on the ocean by Ms. Moreland’s 3rd Class at Scoil Ursula.
All are welcome!

Linda Fährlin is a visual artist and illustrator based in Sligo. She is the illustrator of The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Irish Lighthouses and the upcoming Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Irish Seashore (publishing September 2025). Linda has participated in numerous school-based art residencies and is a Reading Champion for Children’s Books Ireland (2022–2025). She is a member of Visual Artists Ireland and Illustrators Ireland.

Under a Blue Sky is an exhibition highlighting just two of numerous disciplines from Barbara Allen’s practice, linocut prints on linen and watercolour paintings, mostly seascapes on wood and paper.

Barbara was born in Belfast in 1959 and currently divides her time between Belfast and Donegal.

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.

Mairead O’hEocha; Extra Alphabets
Sat. 5 Jul. – Sat. 20 Sep. 2025
Curated by Michael Hill

Mairead O’hEocha’s recent paintings cast an array of extraordinary and everyday tabletop scenes that float in and out from the facts and furnishings of their surrounds: birds invade a garden lunch, an octopus coils its tentacles in a trophy room, a fake loaf of bread sits solemnly at the tenement museum; a blizzard is observed from the comfort of a home workspace.

O’hEocha’s paintings consolidate a variety of recurring themes: how to depict ‘the natural world’ and our relationship with it, sensory encounters and digital space. Extra Alphabets is the largest gathering of O’hEocha’s work in an exhibition to date. The focus is on a group of new large-scale oil paintings, with a number of unseen works, plus a selection from international exhibitions, adding to this overview of the artist’s practice. The exhibition also includes painted interventions that charge the gallery’s walls, bringing O’hEocha’s work into close conversation with The Model’s unique architecture. These painted elements play with the perimeters of the exhibition space, so the cabinets, windows, animals, glass objects, tables and their horizon lines – O’hEocha’s register of motifs – expand, absorb and reflect her approach to painting, and its forms of display.\

Artist Talk
Sat. 5 Jul. 3pm

At the opening of the exhibition Ben Eastham will talk to Mairead O’hEocha about her work.

Ben Eastham is a writer and editor based in Rome and London. He is editor-in-chief of e-flux Criticism and co-founder of The White Review. His second book, The Imaginary Museum, was published in September 2020; his debut novel, The Floating World, is forthcoming with Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Opening Saturday 9 August 2025. 5-7 pm. Special musical performance by Rory Pierce

The Ballinglen Arts Foundation is proud to present Janet Pierce: Into the Light, a solo exhibition by the distinguished Scottish-born, Dublin-based artist Janet Pierce. Running from August 9 to

October 20, 2025, this exhibition brings together new and recent works that explore luminosity, inner vision, and spiritual resonance through richly layered abstraction.

Pierce’s work draws on a lifetime of immersion in the landscapes of Co Fermanagh and Co Monaghan. Her paintings—ethereal yet grounded—serve as meditative spaces that invite reflection and stillness. Known for her use of gold leaf, translucent washes, and sacred symbols, Pierce’s visual language bridges the material and the mystical, offering viewers a pathway “into the light.”

Over more than a decade, Pierce spent winters in India, exhibiting widely in New Delhi and producing a book with acclaimed poet Sudeep Sen. Two significant works from that period—a painting and a tapestry—are permanently installed in Mageough Chapel in Rathmines, Dublin. Now based in Rathmines after 15 years living in a house she built on the grounds of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Pierce continues to create work that is at once deeply personal and universally resonant.

A member of Aosdána, she has exhibited extensively in Ireland, the UK, the United States, and India. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections, and she has received international recognition, including awards from the Fundación Valparaíso in Spain and the Sanskriti Foundation in India.

This exhibition marks a significant return to the west of Ireland for an artist whose practice is rooted in silence, spirit, and landscape.

Echo/Locate a solo exhibition, by artist Sorcha McNamara, launching in The Linenhall Arts Centre on Friday, August 15 at 5pm. Exhibition runs until Saturday, September 27.
Echo/Locate is a site-specific installation of new and existing work by Sorcha McNamara.
McNamara’s practice engages with deconstructive methods of painting, framing, language and image-making. She repurposes found materials to create lyrical, fragmented compositions that frequently respond to the spaces they are placed in, while questioning personal and conceptual tensions around craft, manipulation, agency and value.
As a process, echolocation is used by certain animals, as well as blind, visually impaired and sighted people, to map or assess their environment. A way of locating distant or invisible objects by making particular noises and paying attention to the sound waves, or echoes, reflected back to them. A way of reading a room, processing spatial information, determining the shape, position and motion of objects. Adapting this notion to the sense of familiarity one might feel in any given space at any given time, Echo/Locate acts as a kind of interlocutor, questioning the ways in which we gauge our surroundings through tangible, sensuous forms.
Navigating this dynamic between space and feeling, the exhibition design was developed in consultation with Aidan Conway of MARMAR Architects. The installation focuses on disrupting and modifying the space using existing gallery structures, as well as dismantling conventional notions of how an artwork is seen, encountered and appreciated.
Echo/Locate is jointly supported by Mayo County Council Arts Office and The Golden Fleece Award.

About the Artist:
Sorcha McNamara is an artist, originally from Co. Mayo, currently based in Fire Station Artists’ Studios, Dublin. Her work was shortlisted for the 2025 Golden Fleece Award. Current and recent group exhibitions include Green on Red Gallery (2025); VISUAL Carlow Centre for Contemporary Art (2024); Catalyst Arts, Belfast (2024); Draíocht Gallery, Dublin (2023); and The LAB, Dublin (2023). Recent residencies include Leitrim Sculpture Centre (2024); Zaratan Arte Contemporanea, Lisbon (2024); Totaldobze Art Centre, Riga (2022); and Tangent Projects, Barcelona (2021). Past solo projects include Fathomless Arms, Ballina Arts Centre (2023); (dis)attachments, The Hyde Bridge Gallery (2022); and Readymade #2, Oonagh Young Gallery (2022). Sorcha’s work has been supported through the Arts Council of Ireland Agility Award (2023, 2022, 2021) and a Mayo Artist Bursary Award (2025, 2023, 2022). She holds an MA in Art + Research Collaboration from IADT Dún Laoghaire (2024) and a BA in Painting from Limerick School of Art & Design (2019).

Galway Arts Centre is pleased to announce ‘The Air We Share’, a major group exhibition of works developed through a year-long artist residency programme, exploring air quality, climate, and our shared environment through artistic collaboration and community engagement in Galway.

‘The Air We Share’ brings together the work of artists Christopher Steenson, Leon Butler and the artist collective a place of their own (Sam Vardy and Paula McCloskey) who, over the last nine months have worked with scientists, residents, and community groups to creatively respond to real-world air pollution research and lived experience in Westside, Galway aiming to deepen public understanding of air and its critical role in our shared environment.

The exhibition will be officially opened on Saturday 16 August 2025 at 2pm by Deputy Mayor of Galway City Alan Cheevers with guest speaker Annie Fletcher, Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art. All are welcome to attend.

‘The Air We Share’ brings together a consortium of local partners, which is led by Galway City Council and includes Galway Arts Centre, the University of Galway’s Centre for Creative Technologies, the Centre for Climate and Air Pollution Studies and the Insight SFI Centre for Data Analytics, Westside Resource Centre, and Galway Culture Company.

The resulting works featured in the exhibition include; Leon Butler’s ‘Phosphene’ a project that transforms real-time air quality data into sculptural and digital forms, inviting community members to co-design how environmental data is experienced and interpreted, Christopher Steenson’s ‘Where does the body end’ reflects on air pollution and breath through sound walks, writing, and workshops, linking live data with personal and collective experience and ‘a place of their own’ (Paula McCloskey & Sam Vardy) ‘The 9 Freedoms for the Air’ a speculative, collaborative artwork imagining future air rights, developed through participatory workshops with residents, scientists, and legal experts.

The exhibition will be on view from 16 August to 21 September 2025, with a programme of talks, guided tours, and public events taking place throughout its duration. Please see https://www.galwayartscentre.ie/whats-on/thursday-evenings-at-galway-arts-centre/ for more info.

A very special thanks to collaborators Karena Ryan, Alena Postnikova, Gary Stewart and to the participants The Red Bird Youth Collective & all the members of the Westside Community who brought their collaborative creativity to the projects.

‘The Air We Share’ is a recipient of the Creative Climate Action Fund, an initiative of the Creative Ireland Programme, funded by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media in collaboration with the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications.

For more information please visit www.theairweshare.ie

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.

The Dichotomy of Change
The Dichotomy of Change brings together the work of Betty Gannon and Tony Gunning to explore the layered and evolving nature of our environments, both natural and man-made. Though their subject matter diverge, Gannon focusing on threatened sea and land forests, and Gunning on abandoned rural buildings, both artists present spaces deeply rooted in history, memory, and transformation.

Gannon’s mixed media works offer a contemplative response to the vulnerable ecosystems of Irish oak woodlands and oceanic seaweed forests. Her work highlights the quiet beauty of these habitats while underscoring their fragility in the face of human impact and climate change. In parallel, Gunning’s paintings of derelict structures evoke the echoes of lives once lived, shaped by waves of emigration, economic hardship, and rural decline. His work captures not only the starkness of abandonment but also the enduring beauty and significance of these spaces.

Together, their practices underscore a shared concern for the erosion of place, whether ecological or cultural, and reflect on how such environments, though worn and weathered, continue to act as living repositories of memory, identity, and resilience.

“One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, ‘What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?’” Rachel Carson

Andrew Pelham-Burn, writer and poet

Betty Gannon lives and works in Westport, Co Mayo, mainly working in drawing, painting and mixed media work. She was selected for many solo exhibitions throughout Ireland and Northern Ireland and also selected for numerous group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Gannon was an award winner at the Leitrim Sculpture Centre Summer Exhibition in 2018, she was awarded an Agility Award in 2021 from the Arts Council of Ireland and was selected for a residency in Krems, Austria in 2022. She is currently researching and creating work supported by a Sustainable Arts Bursary Award from Wilderland a public art & community ecology project in Co Mayo.

Tony Gunning has been a professional artist since 2000. Following his sell-out debut at the Davis Gallery, Dublin, in 2002 he has had fifteen solo shows and has exhibited at numerous group shows including RA, RHA and RUA annual exhibitions. In 2007 he won the Curator’s Award and the Bank of Ireland Emerging Artist Award at EV+A (Ireland’s pre-eminent contemporary arts showcase). Internationally he has exhibited solo at the European Parliament, Brussels and was part of the Irish representation at the Florence Biennale 2005. His work is in many public and private collections including the National Collection (O.P.W.), the Northern Ireland Collection (Stormont) and the Bank of Ireland Collection.

Oh What a State is a solo exhibition of work by Darran McGlynn, yearning for a meaningful marking of this time. The exhibition explores how space is embedded with layered histories and emotions in relation to land and identity, echoing encounters of existential complexities. Material tensions of construction and collapse emphasise the personal and collective experience of aspiration, power and loss in our changing world.

Oh What A State is the next iteration of McGlynn’s most recent body of work, following State of Play exhibited as part of Galway International Arts Festival 2025. Darran McGlynn is a member of Artspace Studios in Galway. His multidisciplinary practice combines social and philosophical reflection, contrasting contemporary circumstances with deep time.

Curated by Kate McSharry.

Kate McSharry is a Visual Artist and Independent Curator, also currently working as Co-Director at 126 Artist-Run Gallery & Studios, Administrator at Artspace Studios, and Education Officer at TULCA Festival of Visual Arts. Kate’s practice has been supported by Galway City Council Arts Office, Galway Culture Company, Galway Arts Centre, Culture Ireland and the Arts Council of Ireland since graduating with a First-Class Honours and the Academic Achievement Award in Contemporary Art from ATU Galway.

Exhibition runs until 17th Oct

Official Opening 5th Sept at 6pm – 17th Oct

Signals is a solo exhibition exploring the shifting conditions of the Atlantic Ocean—its waves, winds, and invisible frequencies. These natural forces generate a continuous stream of signals that often go unnoticed, yet they are deeply connected to our environment and health. The artworks in Signals translate these subtle oceanic rhythms into visual form. From the pulse of waves to the patterns of wind, the exhibition reveals how the Atlantic communicates. By making the invisible visible, Signals invites us to reflect on how closely our lives are intertwined with the ocean’s rhythms—and how tuning into these signals can deepen our understanding of both nature and ourselves. Rather than viewing the ocean as empty space, Signals encourages us to see it as a living presence with stories to tell.
The exhibition also features thoughtful reflections on the ocean by Ms. Moreland’s 3rd Class at Scoil Ursula.
All are welcome!

Linda Fährlin is a visual artist and illustrator based in Sligo. She is the illustrator of The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Irish Lighthouses and the upcoming Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Irish Seashore (publishing September 2025). Linda has participated in numerous school-based art residencies and is a Reading Champion for Children’s Books Ireland (2022–2025). She is a member of Visual Artists Ireland and Illustrators Ireland.

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.

Exhibition continues from the 5th of September to the 3rd of October 2025

Senga Sharkey – ‘Somewhere Between Two Extremes’ and Sylvia Thirlway – ‘Elemental Spaces’

Senga Sharkey explores a delicate artistic balance between abstract and the familiar. Her exhibition emphasises the power of storytelling, in both semi-abstract and fully abstract style, memories, feelings and imagination are transformed with colourful textured mediums, collage, acrylic and mixed media.

Sylvia Thirlways’ exhibition is inspired by the state of the planet and the way many societies have forgotten how to value the natural world and all its wonders. Sylvia discovered her love of oils, as it blends and flows over differing surfaces, including wood panels and canvas boards.

Under a Blue Sky is an exhibition highlighting just two of numerous disciplines from Barbara Allen’s practice, linocut prints on linen and watercolour paintings, mostly seascapes on wood and paper.

Barbara was born in Belfast in 1959 and currently divides her time between Belfast and Donegal.

Custom House Studios + Gallery, Westport, is delighted to present Ancestral Biology, an exhibition of glass works by artists Emma Bourke and Fiona Byrnes.

This exhibition explores the informal transmission of plant knowledge through the exchange of cuttings, seeds, and slips.

Glass, a shared material of deep significance to Bourke and Byrne, features prominently in the exhibition. Drawing on its historic role in horticulture and natural history, it becomes a medium for both preservation and storytelling.

Opening Reception takes place Thursday 18th September at 6pm

All welcome!

Custom House Studios + Gallery, Westport, is delighted to present Interiorities, an exhibition of drawings and photographic works by Niamh Clarke.

Clarke’s drawing practice reflects an interest in memory and temporality. Exploring the relationship between photography and drawing, a focus is placed on the embodied presence of gesture and materialisation through re-description of found and personal photographs. Containing personal narratives the drawings embrace subconsciousness and stream of consciousness, embodied practice and materiality.

Thursday 18th September at 6pm
All Welcome!