What’s on in Connaught

A garden is a seed itself, a solo exhibition by artist Katerina Gribkoff, opens at Custom House Studios + Gallery on Thursday, 9 July at 6 pm.
This exhibition is a manifestation of an open-ended, unfolding relationship between artist and place, in which the wild edge of a garden is considered and engaged through colour-making and craft. It features quilted tapestries made with up-cycled cottons and linens dyed with plants, alongside a series of photographs.
Image: Katerina Gribkoff, Gypsywort in flower, 2025, 35mm Film Photograph

Rites of Homing, a solo exhibition by artist Christine Prescott, opens at Custom House Studios + Gallery on Thursday, 9 July at 6 pm.
Christine Prescott’s new solo exhibition traverses the emotional and ecological distance between the semi-arid plains of Australia and the rain-rich island of Ireland. Through meditative engagement with materiality and handcrafted processes, Prescott’s art ritually navigates migration, exploring how sites of nurture and nourishment can be found within unfamiliar landscapes.
Image: Christine Prescott, Find Some Things to Love, Willow bark & cotton thread, 100x120cm

The Linenhall is delighted to present Soft Fascination, a new exhibition showcasing the work of five Mayo-based artists, opening in the Linenhall Gallery on Friday, 10 July and running until Saturday, 22 August 2026.

Bringing together a diverse range of artforms, Soft Fascination marks the culmination of the Bolay Programme 2025, an ambitious professional development initiative run by the Linenhall that supported five Mayo artists through an intensive five-month mentorship with acclaimed curator and art critic Marianne O’Kane Boal.

The artists featured are: Genevieve King; Christine Prescott; Caroline Reapy; Bridget Ryan; and Ian Wieczorek

Satellite Projects + Studios x Galway International Arts Festival 2026

Join us on Sunday 12 July, 12–3pm, for the launch of Awash, a solo exhibition by Ciarán MacChoncarraige.

Awash is a collection of street photography in which the camera acts as a salve for the deluge of modern life. Painterly, expressionistic and vibrant, the work presents an intimate portrait of the urban experience, using Galway City as its canvas. Through textured foregrounds, reflections and motion blur, MacChoncarraige creates images that sit between observation and abstraction, blending the surreal with the documentary traditions of street photography.

To reserve a spot for the opening, click here.

Exhibition launch Friday 12th June 5-8pm.

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

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

FOLD, the second exhibition in Oughterard Courthouse Arts Programme’s 2026 Summer Arts Programme, opens on 3 July at Oughterard Courthouse Gallery. Bringing together the work of three generations of the Connemara-based West family— Aosdána member Margaret Irwin West, Katharine West, Richard West and Manon West.

The exhibition explores themes of transformation, landscape and memory through painting, print, ceramics and woodturning.

FOLD will be officially opened by Connemara poet and Aosdána member Mary O’Malley on Friday July 3 at 7pm. All Welcome.
Image by Margaret Irwin West

Solas Art Gallery presents solo exhibitions by two local artists, showcasing digital culture and the seascape environment.

This joint solo exhibition series brings together two distinctive, artistic voices uniting across contrasting mediums; the immersive realm of digital artistry by Damien O’Rourke and expressive language of abstract seascape painting by Tony Lock.

Experience this fascinating dialogue between screen and sea by joining us for the opening of this exhibition on Friday 19th June at 7:30pm at Solas Art Gallery in the Island Theatre, Ballinamore. The exhibition runs until Friday 17th July.

Exhibition continues from 15/11/25 until 27/09/26.

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.

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

Exhibition launch Friday 12th June 5-8pm.

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

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

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

Solas Art Gallery presents solo exhibitions by two local artists, showcasing digital culture and the seascape environment.

This joint solo exhibition series brings together two distinctive, artistic voices uniting across contrasting mediums; the immersive realm of digital artistry by Damien O’Rourke and expressive language of abstract seascape painting by Tony Lock.

Experience this fascinating dialogue between screen and sea by joining us for the opening of this exhibition on Friday 19th June at 7:30pm at Solas Art Gallery in the Island Theatre, Ballinamore. The exhibition runs until Friday 17th July.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exhibition continues from 26/06/26.

The official opening of the exhibition by artists completing the L5 and L6 Art courses in GRETB Castlerea Further Education and Training Centre, took place on Thursday 25th of June in Áras an Chontae. This was made possible by invitation and support from Roscommon County Arts Officer, Rhona McGrath.

The exhibition provides a rich and engaging display of works in Painting, Collage, Combined Media, Sculpture, Photography, Sound and Video across a variety of themes, with artists exploring concerns and concepts that resonate on different levels in response to our contemporary world. All Welcome.

Gina O’Connor is delighted to present her solo exhibition Lá Breá Álainn (Lovely Fine Day) at Teach Nan Phaidi Restaurant on Inis Mór Island, County Galway. This exciting collection of oil paintings by West of Ireland artist Gina O’Connor is a celebration of a typical Irish Lá Breá Álainn.

This exhibition showcases Gina’s dynamic style, inspired by her exhilarating experiences in Inis Mór and Connemara. The winds, colours and light of the West have a tossing-and-turning effect on the human soul, and it is with great joy that Gina recreates this in her paintings. Fáilte, tar isteach and enjoy the sceitiminí (excitement) of Gina’s exhibition.

Unbroken, an exhibition of white pencil drawings by Jennifer Allen. Atmospheric, evocative images, capturing a story in every line and minute detail.

22.96│Overflow opens 3 July, 6pm at Ballina Civic Offices.

Presented in Ballina, County Mayo, this Queensland, Australian large-scale exhibition, connects shared flood histories between the River Moy and Gympie’s Mary River, which reached 22.96 metres during the 2022 disaster.

Through large-scale paper works, sculpture, and videography, artists Miriam Innes, Joolie Gibbs, and Leeroy Todd explore water as both destructive force and connective presence, reflecting on vulnerability, resilience, memory and community.

FOLD, the second exhibition in Oughterard Courthouse Arts Programme’s 2026 Summer Arts Programme, opens on 3 July at Oughterard Courthouse Gallery. Bringing together the work of three generations of the Connemara-based West family— Aosdána member Margaret Irwin West, Katharine West, Richard West and Manon West.

The exhibition explores themes of transformation, landscape and memory through painting, print, ceramics and woodturning.

FOLD will be officially opened by Connemara poet and Aosdána member Mary O’Malley on Friday July 3 at 7pm. All Welcome.
Image by Margaret Irwin West

Sarah Loughnane presents Where Water Moves, a solo exhibition of fluid acrylic paintings, opening 3 July at Church Gallery, Ballinasloe Library.

The exhibition explores water as both movement and surface event – current, drift, and the bloom phenomena that appear when algae spreads across a lake or ocean. The work uses pour techniques to enact rather than depict these processes, treating fluid paint as a parallel system to water itself.