Exhibition Opening: Saturday 9th August, 3.00 – 5.00pm. All Welcome.

Butler Gallery, in association with Kilkenny Arts Festival, is delighted to present an exhibition exploring the theme of ‘Cities of the World’ by two artists, Kathy Prendergast and Chris Leach. The two have never met, but are intrinsically linked by this subject matter which they realise in very different ways.

Kathy Prendergast, an Irish London-based artist, is represented by her suite of 113 City Drawings which were begun in 1992. Owned by IMMA, they have not been exhibited in many years. Based on contemporary maps of the world’s capital cities, Prendergast compresses each city, large and small, and follows her own sense of scale to contain each city on the same size paper. Transcribing the network of lines with understated pencil marks she conveys the pattern of routes through, within and around each city, imposing an unfathomable sense of democracy on the world. The skeletal images reduce even the largest and most powerful communities to a delicate network of lines that resemble organic patterns in nature.

Chris Leach, a British Manchester-based artist, began his Capital Cities drawing project in 2012 and continued until 2022. He has completed 196 tiny drawings of every recognised capital city in the world which together functions as one piece of work. Leach’s miniature drawings are solidly three-dimensional, drawn with pencil, scalpel and burnishing tools on the gessoed face of an oak block. Leach is interested in how scale can be used as a tool for both psychological and representational investigation.

The cities work by Kathy Prendergast and Chris Leach is a fascinating juxtaposition and prompts wider discussions around geography, architecture and politics—what cities say about us and what they don’t.

Additionally, a film programme ‘City as Character’ will highlight iconic cities in both mainstream and art house cinema. Co-curated by Butler Gallery and Out of Focus, films will be shown in the Digital Gallery and also in collaboration with the Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny.

Anna O’Sullivan
Director & Exhibition Curator

Learning & Public Engagement Events:

Artists Kathy Prendergast and Chris Leach in conversation with exhibition curator Anna O’Sullivan and Dr Yvonne Scott, Tuesday 12th August 2025 at 12.00pm, Parade Tower, Kilkenny Castle. Free ticketed event, available to book on the Kilkenny Arts Festival website.

Dr Yvonne Scott is an Emeritus Fellow and former Associate Professor of History of Art at Trinity College Dublin.
She was awarded the RHA Gold Medal for 2025 in recognition of her services to Irish art. She has researched and published extensively in modern and contemporary art, including analysis of various aspects of the work of artist Kathy Prendergast. Her most recent book is Landscape and Environment in Contemporary Irish Art, published by Churchill House Press in association with the Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2023.

Image: (L) Kathy Prendergast, Mexico City from ‘City Drawings’, 1992, Pencil on Paper, 24 x 32cm, Collection Irish Museum of Modern Art, Purchase 1996, © Kathy Prendergast. (R) Chris Leach, Tallin, Estonia, Pencil, scalpel, burnishing tool, rabbit skin gesso on quarter sawn oak, 32 x 43mm (From Capital Cities series 2013-2023)

Jane Arden (1927-1982) was a leading figure in experimental British theatre and cinema, and an important radical feminist voice of the 1960s and ‘70s. Born in Wales, this director, actor, musician, and poet initially trained as a professional actress, a future derailed by marriage and children. Arden turned to writing, and had some success with stage and television projects. With her work increasingly informed by her politics, the beginning of a personal and professional relationship with director Jack Bond facilitated the move to film, and the small body of work for which she is here celebrated. Following her death, Bond withdrew these often strongly autobiographical films from circulation, only relenting decades later. Arden’s work is raw, perceptive, disturbing, vital, and often beautiful. We are pleased to present the work of an overlooked filmmaker wholly deserving of greater acclaim.

Films:
Separation – Screening Saturday 9th (in-cinema and on IFI@Home)
The Other Side of the Underneath – Screening Sunday 10th, Streaming from Saturday 9th on IFI@Home
Anti-Clock – Screening Wednesday 13th (+ short film Vibration), Streaming from Saturday 9th on IFI@Home

Join us at Luan Gallery on Saturday 9th August at 12pm for an insightful and engaging talk by artist and researcher Han Tiernan, as they delve into the history of Irish LGBTQIA+ activism.

This talk will shine a light on key moments from the past 50 years of marches and protests in Ireland, with a special focus on the AIDS Memorial Quilt, currently on display at Luan Gallery as part of the group exhibitoon Soft Surge, and a powerful selection of placards and banners that have shaped Ireland’s LGBTQIA+ protest culture.

This event is free to attend and no booking is required.

This event is kindly supported by the Arts Council.

Han Tiernan (they/them) is a researcher, writer and artist based in Dublin. Their key area of interest is contemporary queer history and expanding narratives within the Irish LGBTQ+ community. Since 2022, Han has coordinated REWINDRECORD (RFR) along with Brendan Fox and the Museum of Everyone. RFR is a national touring initiative comprising talks, tours, exhibitions, and workshops exploring queer history and queer representation within a local context. In May 2023, Han co-produced the Unshrinking Violets: 50 Years of Lesbian Activism programme with Francis Fay for the Bealtaine Festival 2023. From September 2021 to April 2023, Han was the Editorial Assistant and Archivist with GCN (Gay Community News). During this time, they oversaw the digitisation and online launch of the GCN Archive. They were the lead researcher of the Queer-in-Progress. Timeline initiative and editor of the Queer-in-Progress. Timeline: Online Archive with Project Arts Centre. They also authored ‘Foul, Filthy, Stinking Muck’: the LGBT Theatre of Project Arts Centre, 1966 – 2000. Han is also the creator of the Ranelagh/Rathmines Queer Walking Tour and is currently the House Manager of Project Arts Centre.

Image details: The Irish Names Project, The Irish Names Quilt (1990 -), mixed media, fabric, found objects, personal belongings of deceased, dimensions variable. Photo by Louis Hough.

EXHIBITION OPENING: Sunday Aug. 10th 3pm to 5pm – ALL WELCOME

Runs until Sunday, August 31st.

“Say Again, This Place”, is a new body of site-responsive works by artist Shane Malone-Murphy marking his first solo exhibition. Developed for the unique architectural context of the Courthouse Tinahely, this exhibition highlights a continued inquiry into place, memory, and materiality.

more information on Artist: https://www.courthousearts.ie/whats-on-event/shane-malone-murphy-residency-say-again-this-place

Viewing: Wednesday to Saturday – 10am to 4pm
Sundays: 12 noon to 4pm
courthousearts.ie
Y14 X099

The Bedding Planes

There is solace in beauty and it nourishes the soul.
‘The Bedding Planes’ documents a moment in time, perhaps with tiny traces on a well worn path. Beauty is at its heart.

In geological terms a bedding plane is a surface representing contact between a deposit and a depositing medium such as water and atmosphere during a time of change and this is reflected in a difference in texture or composition, with a bedding plane representing the visible line of change. This bedding plane however takes a more nuanced form and includes works made from layers of colour, paper and clay. The pop up Gallery lies at the bottom of a long narrow ‘natural’ garden that is a haven for wildlife and biodiversity. As the viewer navigates their way to the room along a winding path through birdsong and dappled light from the surrounding trees the journey itself becomes a contemplative experience and the boundary between art and nature disappears.

The Bedding Planes is curated by Helena Gorey and shows her works on paper alongside forms and vessels in clay by Rob Pearson and Peter Scroope and introduces Roise O’Shea.

Open daily from 2.00pm to 6.00pm from the 10th to 17th August 2025.
Pop Up Gallery during Kilkenny Arts Festival, Burnchurch R95 Y0C8

Exhibition continues 5 July – 30 August 2025.

Naomi Draper’s work references a diverse range of research sources that are centred around botany and botanical activity throughout history. It investigates processes of collecting, preserving, and archiving natural particles, fragments and found objects harvested from our landscape.

Naomi is interested in the role process’ of production and making can play in the negotiation of relationships between humans and other matter. Her work looks for moments when materials become active participants in our learning and development.

This exhibition will present a large collection of objects and materials that the artist accumulated and kept over the past five years. Many of the works explore the internal cavity of plants, seedpods, shells and other things, investigating unseen hidden spaces and giving form to invisible entities.

Through various and repeated casting process’ there is an intention to forge a relationship with an object that can never be fully understood, accessed or grasped, acknowledging an attachment and melancholy for particular objects and plant species.

Exhibition continues 5 July – 30 August 2025.

David Fox has become renowned for his compelling connection with the contemporary Irish landscape, where in recent work he juxtaposes the vibrant essence of street art and graffiti within the bustling cities, with the often quiet and overlooked built structures and walls that are seen scattered across rural Ireland. Working primarily with oil paints, Fox brings these walls, alleys and derelict structures to life on canvas, transforming the often-overlooked art of graffiti into evocative pieces that resonate with a modern audience. His paintings are not merely visual explorations but rather profound dialogues with the culture, identity and rebellion found within the modern landscape.

Through meticulous attention to detail and a nuanced understanding of colour and form, Fox’s works serve as a testament to the hidden beauty and enduring spirit of street art and graffiti , weaving a tangible connection between the every day and the extraordinary. His collection is a love letter to the streets, a celebration of the unspoken, and a compelling journey through contemporary Ireland’s visual voice.

Exhibition continues 7 August – 17 August 2025.

Dublin artist Linda Proudfoot and Latvian artist Dana Sorokina have come together for a two person exhibition during the AKA Fringe Festival in Kilkenny.
Linda will exhibit a selection of her landscapes and seascapes, while Dana will present some of her vibrant flower compositions and her images of VW Classic Beetles.

Exhibition open 10am – 5pm Mon – Sat, and 12-5pm Sunday.
Curated by Tony Strickland

Exhibition continues 9th August – 6th September 2025

Presenting new works by members of Graphic Studio Dublin and invited artists.

Now in its 65th year, Graphic Studio Dublin continues to be a vital space for fine art printmaking in Ireland. The Summer Exhibition brings together new work by current members and invited artists, reflecting the wide range of styles, subjects, and printmaking techniques being explored in the studio today.  From etching and lithography to carborundum and screenprint, the show celebrates the work, experimentation, and community that has defined the studio for more than six decades.

Vertigo 67th celebrates the anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and the collaboration between Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann for their masterpiece with a three-day international film conference that will focus exclusively on all aspects of what makes this movie a masterpiece in cinema. Vertigo67 festival kicks off with a special 4k screening of the 1958 classic film Vertigo starring James Stewart and Kim Novak in the Lighthouse Cinema in Dublin on Tuesday 12 August at 8pm, with a free introductory talk before the movie screening given by Elizabeth
Bullock (San Francisco).

After the evening screening of the movie at the Lighthouse on Tuesday 12 August, the Vertigo67 festival continues over in the Trinity Long Room Hub venue, Trinity College Dublin from Wednesday 13 August to Friday 15 August. The festival events at Trinity College run over three days with presentations, talks, interviews and panel discussions from 20 international scholars, writers, conductors and artists from across the globe: US, UK, Hong Kong, Ireland and Switzerland.

Conference session tickets: €10 cash only (Tickets at door Trinity Long Room Hub)

House on the Beach
Container
Featuring work by artist Nina McGowan, in collaboration with Trinity College Dublin, a recipient of the Creative Climate Action Fund, an initiative from the Creative Ireland Programme. Supported by Wexford County Council’s Climate Action and Culture Teams.

Friday 15th August – Friday 12th September, 2025
Wexford County Council, Carricklawn Wexford, Y35 WY93

Opening Event: Thursday 14th August, 6pm
Guest Speaker: Arts Consultant, Ruairí Ó Cuív

Container, an exhibition by visual artist Nina McGowan opens in County Hall on Thursday 14th August at 6pm. This exhibition, which explores our relationship to climate change, uses familiar, domestic objects transformed into a large-scale sculpture installation.

Over the past two years, Nina worked with Trinity College Dublin as part of “House on the Beach”, a Creative Ireland funded Creative Climate Action project. The exhibition is accompanied by a series of curated round-table talks at beaches throughout Wexford, on topics such as the circular economy, materials, nature-based solutions, and water quality; all very pertinent themes for the times that we live in.

The exhibition, Container, strives to make comprehensible the urgency to act in the face of the threat of the climate crisis. It comprises three sculptural pieces constructed from household objects on a monumental scale. The scale is intended to reflect the magnitude of the challenge we face. The medium conveys the weight of materialism and its contribution to climate change. While the treatment—each piece is charred to reveal a beautiful but dissonant charcoal surface—evokes a sense of what we stand to lose.
The thought-provoking sculptures lead us to question what we have accumulated in our own homes. What is inside our own wardrobes and our houses that we perhaps don’t use or need? All of these accumulations can be a burden and put pressure on the earth’s finite resources. In Ireland, we discard around 110,000 tonnes of textiles as waste every year, of which around 64,000 tonnes are discarded as household waste via kerbside collection, the majority being clothing.

A “House on the Beach” represents an aspiration and an ideal: someone might say they ultimately want to retire to ‘a house by the beach’. But the issue of global warming and the impact of coastal erosion is questioning our value system and whether the way of life we have become accustomed to is sustainable. How do we live, and what might we need to change and leave behind?

This is a work about loss and the prospect of losing not only the natural world but also cultural artefacts and practices. The range of furniture used within the exhibition reflects the architecture and evokes the aspirations of past generations. Yet these old items are not valued in today’s world.

Nina McGowan is a visual artist who has been working in the area of immersive sculptural installation for over 20 years. She is a climate activist and a world champion and world record holder in the growing sport of freediving. She is Ireland’s ambassador for the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, whose mission is to end the destruction of habitats and illegal killing of marine wildlife in our seas.
…………………………………………………………………

Talks on the Tide
Running parallel to the exhibition, curated talks will examine different climate themes and explore the actions we can take together. Guest speakers include local artists and community groups with researchers and staff from Trinity College Dublin. These talks will be held on the beach as the tide approaches. All welcome to join the conversation with artist Nina McGowan, guest speakers and staff from Wexford County Council Climate Action team.

For further information about this project, email houseonthebeachwexford@gmail.com or visit https://www.tcd.ie/sustainability/events-listing/.

Muine Bheag Arts is pleased to present COMMUNE from 15th – 25th August 2025. Taking place in and around the Muine Bheag Community Centre, the programme unfolds as a collection of live events, workshops and public interventions.

COMMUNE is a site for assembling and disseminating ideas, emerging from a central studio and gathering space shared by artists, community groups, collaborators and graduates-in-residence. COMMUNE can be understood as a series of small collective actions and gestures which reach towards systems of support and connection.

The programme includes contributions from: Anna Aleksejeva, After School Special, Marian Balfe, BEAM Services, boring girls, Bloomers, CATU, Coracle, Ciara Davitt, Nina Fitzgerald Graham & Mica Moroney, Cian Lawler, Chloe Maguire (Distro: Live Publishing), Emily Mc Gardle, Niamh Seana Meehan & Lucie McLaughlin, Liliane Puthod & Ingrid Lyons, Queer Shed Sligo and Lily O’Shea.

You can find more information here: https://muinebheagarts.com/COMMUNE-2025

COMMUNE is kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Carlow Arts Office, Creative Ireland Carlow and Bagenalstown Creative Places

Join exhibiting artist Emily Waszak in conversation with curator Sara Greavu. The talk includes a short introduction and conversation about Emily Waszak’s work which is on view as part of the group exhibition ‘Faigh Amach’, 01 August – 21 September 2025.

Emily Waszak, along with Ella Bertilsson and Kathy Tynan, was selected through an open call to take part in the group exhibition ‘Faigh Amach’ (Irish, roughly translated as ‘discover’). The exhibition is a new initiative by Temple Bar Gallery + Studios in partnership with Culture Ireland and Southwark Park Galleries (SPG), London, to support an artist in presenting their first solo exhibition outside Ireland. One of the three exhibiting artists will be invited to present their first international solo exhibition at SPG Lake Gallery in Spring 2026.

Emily Waszak’s textile and assemblage works are informed by rituals of her Japanese cultural heritage, experiences of grief and the landscape of her home in Ireland. Using both ancient and contemporary weaving techniques, alongside the collection and display of found materials and other hand-made objects, Waszak combines processes that transcend time and place to find meaning in loss and understand how to access otherworldliness. Born in North Carolina, United States, Emily Waszak works between Dublin and Donegal. Recent solo exhibitions include Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny (2025); Pallas Projects, Dublin (2024); TU Dublin (2023).

Sara Greavu is a curator, independent researcher, writer and organiser, and is the Director of Fire Station Artists’ Studios. Previously she was Curator of Visual Arts at Project Arts Centre and the curator, with Project, of the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2024) with the artist Eimear Walshe. Independent projects include Open the book at a different page, a research exhibition produced with artist Ciara Phillips and former members of the Derry Film and Video Workshop, which dealt with intertwined political and cultural initiatives in Derry in the 1980s.

Event location Information: This event takes place in a ground-floor, street-facing Gallery. The space contains free standing installations, sculptures and wall-hung paintings. For further accessibility information please contact Learning + Public Engagement Curator Órla Goodwin.

Muine Bheag Arts is delighted to launch new publication Beacon by Niamh Seana Meehan. Join us to celebrate the start of the COMMUNE programme with readings from Niamh Seana Meehan and Lucie McLaughlin.

Beacon is a travelogue which traces Niamh Seana Meehan’s explorations around the coast of Ireland with her dog, Olive. A collection of meditations, sketches, and photographs offer Meehan’s reflections on being in transit and record intimate conversations with the landscape.
~
Niamh Seana Meehan is an artist working across sound, sculpture, installation, and text. Her practice explores floating as a methodological approach to nurturing our relationship with water and the wider environment. Through acts of sense-making, wayfinding, and deep listening, she invites immersive experiences that explore our entanglements with more-than-human worlds. Her work has been exhibited at The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; An Táin Arts Centre, Dundalk; and Art Arcadia, Derry.

Lucie McLaughlin is an artist, writer, researcher and facilitator. Her practice focuses on expanded forms of writing, realised in publications, sound and performance readings. Her work has recently been published by Paper Visual Art, JOAN, Mirror Lamp Press, The Yellow Paper and Catalyst Arts Belfast. Her current research is based at the Centre for Contemporary Art Derry~Londonderry where she is undertaking a collaborative PhD project with Kingston School of Art.

Muine Bheag Arts is pleased to present COMMUNE from 15th – 25th August 2025. Taking place in and around the Muine Bheag Community Centre, the programme unfolds as a collection of live events, workshops and public interventions.

COMMUNE is a site for assembling and disseminating ideas, emerging from a central studio and gathering space shared by artists, community groups, collaborators and graduates-in-residence. COMMUNE can be understood as a series of small collective actions and gestures which reach towards systems of support and connection.

COMMUNE is kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Carlow Arts Office, Creative Ireland Carlow and Bagenalstown Creative Places

Bog Bothy is a touring collection of new work, built outcomes, and ambitious proposals toward a new peatlands architecture, presented by the Irish Architecture Foundation and 12th Field.

Bog Bothy is touring to Girley Bog, Co. Meath on 16-17 August during National Heritage Week, following a successful run in Clara.

Bog Bothy includes a new Bothy shelter, an exhibition of photographs by Shane Hynan and drawings by 12th Field, work by artist in residence Luke Casserly, and a public programme of workshops, tours and performances on our evolving relationship with Ireland’s peatlands through the lens of architecture and placemaking.

The bothy structure has been co-created with communities in Offaly, Louth and Meath and designed by architects Evelyn D’Arcy and David Jameson of 12th Field.

All events are free but must be booked in advance.

Saturday 16 August:
11:00 – 11:30 Bog Bothy Launch and Tea Ceremony
11:30 – 12:30 Guided Bothy Tour with 12th Field
13:30 – 15:00 Novel Ecologies Workshop with Fiona Nulty and Helen Flanagan
15:15 – 17:00 What A Bog Remembers – Workshop with Luke Casserly
17:30 – 19:00 An Evening with Friends of Ardee Bog

Sunday 17 August:
7:00 – 8:30 Moth Trapping Workshop
11:00 – 12:30 Bog Bothy Tour with 12th Field
13:00-15:00 Bog Lab and Zine Workshop with Elena Aitova & Kate Flood

Muine Bheag Arts is thrilled to welcome artist Lily O’Shea as part of COMMUNE. Lily will present a new body of work, a framework for me and you, which responds to conditions of precarity within the context of the housing crisis and points towards alternative ways of looking at space and home.

Lily will lead a tour of her public sculpture series, along with a reading by Ali O’Shea who has written a text in response to the work. This will be followed by an open discussion with members of CATU.

More information and booking here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/tour-with-artist-lily-oshea-discussion-with-catu-17th-august-2pm-tickets-1510992672759?aff=oddtdtcreator

~
Lily O’Shea is a visual artist based in Cork, working across sculpture, drawing, and writing. Through woodwork, she creates quasi-sculptural forms that develop into immersive installations, integrating technical drawings and reflective texts. Lily’s research-based practice explores different methods of survival in a fluctuating ideological structure, while emphasizing the need to reclaim and redefine our relationship with time.

In 2025, Lily was awarded the Evolve Practice Award by Fire Station Artists’ Studios, where she completed a three-month residency. Recent work has featured in Bless The Corners of This House (Bloomers, Cork, 2025), The Collision Project (screen service, Dublin, 2024), and CCA Introducing (Centre for Contemporary Art, Derry, 2024). Lily is a recent recipient of the Visual Arts Bursary and Agility Award (2024), and was previously supported by the Creative Practitioner Bursary from Galway City Council in 2023.

Community Action Tenants Union (CATU) is a membership-based Union for Communities & Tenants in Ireland with active branches across the country. CATU was founded in Dublin in 2019 by a few dozen tenants, to help share resources and skills to empower themselves and their neighbours facing eviction, homelessness and housing precarity.

COMMUNE is kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Carlow Arts Office, Creative Ireland Carlow and Bagenalstown Creative Places

Sunday 17th August 2025 – 2pm

SALON OF DIÚLTAÍODH
A joyful uprising in art, spirit, and solidarity.
In 1863, a group of artists rejected by the official Paris Salon sparked something unexpected — not just an exhibition, but a movement. The 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘯 𝘥𝘦𝘴 𝘙𝘦𝘧𝘶𝘴é𝘴 became a turning point in art history, opening space for bold, new voices and reshaping the future of creativity. This show is offered in that same spirit — a celebration of works that didn’t find a place in the usual halls, but still pulse with life, vision, and possibility. We invite artists to share pieces that were turned away by institutions over the past year — not as an end, but as a beginning. This is about honoring the full creative journey: the misfits, the almosts, the not-yets. It’s about coming together to build something more open, more honest, and more alive. Let’s create a space where refusal becomes resonance — and where connection, not competition, takes the lead.
Curated by @ishmaelclaxtonphotos, Salon of Diúltaíodh is a gathering place for those who make with heart, question the rules, and carry forward the belief that art is for everyone, not just a chosen few. Will have over 50 amazing artist from across the country

Join us at Luan Gallery on Saturday 9th August at 12pm for an insightful and engaging talk by artist and researcher Han Tiernan, as they delve into the history of Irish LGBTQIA+ activism.

This talk will shine a light on key moments from the past 50 years of marches and protests in Ireland, with a special focus on the AIDS Memorial Quilt, currently on display at Luan Gallery as part of the group exhibitoon Soft Surge, and a powerful selection of placards and banners that have shaped Ireland’s LGBTQIA+ protest culture.

This event is free to attend and no booking is required.

This event is kindly supported by the Arts Council.

Han Tiernan (they/them) is a researcher, writer and artist based in Dublin. Their key area of interest is contemporary queer history and expanding narratives within the Irish LGBTQ+ community. Since 2022, Han has coordinated REWINDRECORD (RFR) along with Brendan Fox and the Museum of Everyone. RFR is a national touring initiative comprising talks, tours, exhibitions, and workshops exploring queer history and queer representation within a local context. In May 2023, Han co-produced the Unshrinking Violets: 50 Years of Lesbian Activism programme with Francis Fay for the Bealtaine Festival 2023. From September 2021 to April 2023, Han was the Editorial Assistant and Archivist with GCN (Gay Community News). During this time, they oversaw the digitisation and online launch of the GCN Archive. They were the lead researcher of the Queer-in-Progress. Timeline initiative and editor of the Queer-in-Progress. Timeline: Online Archive with Project Arts Centre. They also authored ‘Foul, Filthy, Stinking Muck’: the LGBT Theatre of Project Arts Centre, 1966 – 2000. Han is also the creator of the Ranelagh/Rathmines Queer Walking Tour and is currently the House Manager of Project Arts Centre.

Image details: The Irish Names Project, The Irish Names Quilt (1990 -), mixed media, fabric, found objects, personal belongings of deceased, dimensions variable. Photo by Louis Hough.

10 April – 10 August 2025
Beit Wing (Rooms 6-10) | Tickets from €5.

Our major spring exhibition is dedicated to the pioneering Irish modernists Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone, and brings together 90 of their works of art. It explores their friendship and shared experiences while studying in Paris during the early 1920s, and traces their careers back to Ireland. The exhibition highlights the early convergences and later divergences in their styles as they developed distinct artistic voices. Featuring paintings, stained glass, and preparatory drawings, it reveals how both women were trailblazers in Irish art although remaining connected to conventional themes such as religion and landscape.

This exhibition is kindly supported by The Klesch Collection, Lead Sponsor; Friends of the National Gallery of Ireland, and the Art of Friendship Giving Circle.

The Gallery would like to thank the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media for their ongoing support.

Dysphoric Euphoria presents polarising extremes of queer existence. Within this exhibition Peter Bradley and Stephen Doyle explore the joys and the hardships of Queer experiences through painting. Taking on themes of societal exclusion, religious power, and identity in a contemporary Irish society.

The titular duality is divided by the artists. Doyle manifests Dysphoria by allowing discomfort to become tangible through their handling of paint and installation work. They depict some of the major obstacles facing the community to challenge systems of power and oppression in its various forms. Bradley’s collection portrays the Euphoric through themes of community, joy as a form of resistance, and liberation from gender norms through playful collages of paint, plexiglass and personality.

Accompanying the paintings within the show are texts by El Reid- Buckley, FELISPEAKS and William Keohane.

Vertigo 67th celebrates the anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and the collaboration between Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann for their masterpiece with a three-day international film conference that will focus exclusively on all aspects of what makes this movie a masterpiece in cinema. Vertigo67 festival kicks off with a special 4k screening of the 1958 classic film Vertigo starring James Stewart and Kim Novak in the Lighthouse Cinema in Dublin on Tuesday 12 August at 8pm, with a free introductory talk before the movie screening given by Elizabeth
Bullock (San Francisco).

After the evening screening of the movie at the Lighthouse on Tuesday 12 August, the Vertigo67 festival continues over in the Trinity Long Room Hub venue, Trinity College Dublin from Wednesday 13 August to Friday 15 August. The festival events at Trinity College run over three days with presentations, talks, interviews and panel discussions from 20 international scholars, writers, conductors and artists from across the globe: US, UK, Hong Kong, Ireland and Switzerland.

Conference session tickets: €10 cash only (Tickets at door Trinity Long Room Hub)

Muine Bheag Arts is delighted to launch new publication Beacon by Niamh Seana Meehan. Join us to celebrate the start of the COMMUNE programme with readings from Niamh Seana Meehan and Lucie McLaughlin.

Beacon is a travelogue which traces Niamh Seana Meehan’s explorations around the coast of Ireland with her dog, Olive. A collection of meditations, sketches, and photographs offer Meehan’s reflections on being in transit and record intimate conversations with the landscape.
~
Niamh Seana Meehan is an artist working across sound, sculpture, installation, and text. Her practice explores floating as a methodological approach to nurturing our relationship with water and the wider environment. Through acts of sense-making, wayfinding, and deep listening, she invites immersive experiences that explore our entanglements with more-than-human worlds. Her work has been exhibited at The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; An Táin Arts Centre, Dundalk; and Art Arcadia, Derry.

Lucie McLaughlin is an artist, writer, researcher and facilitator. Her practice focuses on expanded forms of writing, realised in publications, sound and performance readings. Her work has recently been published by Paper Visual Art, JOAN, Mirror Lamp Press, The Yellow Paper and Catalyst Arts Belfast. Her current research is based at the Centre for Contemporary Art Derry~Londonderry where she is undertaking a collaborative PhD project with Kingston School of Art.

Muine Bheag Arts is pleased to present COMMUNE from 15th – 25th August 2025. Taking place in and around the Muine Bheag Community Centre, the programme unfolds as a collection of live events, workshops and public interventions.

COMMUNE is a site for assembling and disseminating ideas, emerging from a central studio and gathering space shared by artists, community groups, collaborators and graduates-in-residence. COMMUNE can be understood as a series of small collective actions and gestures which reach towards systems of support and connection.

COMMUNE is kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Carlow Arts Office, Creative Ireland Carlow and Bagenalstown Creative Places

Join exhibiting artist Emily Waszak in conversation with curator Sara Greavu. The talk includes a short introduction and conversation about Emily Waszak’s work which is on view as part of the group exhibition ‘Faigh Amach’, 01 August – 21 September 2025.

Emily Waszak, along with Ella Bertilsson and Kathy Tynan, was selected through an open call to take part in the group exhibition ‘Faigh Amach’ (Irish, roughly translated as ‘discover’). The exhibition is a new initiative by Temple Bar Gallery + Studios in partnership with Culture Ireland and Southwark Park Galleries (SPG), London, to support an artist in presenting their first solo exhibition outside Ireland. One of the three exhibiting artists will be invited to present their first international solo exhibition at SPG Lake Gallery in Spring 2026.

Emily Waszak’s textile and assemblage works are informed by rituals of her Japanese cultural heritage, experiences of grief and the landscape of her home in Ireland. Using both ancient and contemporary weaving techniques, alongside the collection and display of found materials and other hand-made objects, Waszak combines processes that transcend time and place to find meaning in loss and understand how to access otherworldliness. Born in North Carolina, United States, Emily Waszak works between Dublin and Donegal. Recent solo exhibitions include Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny (2025); Pallas Projects, Dublin (2024); TU Dublin (2023).

Sara Greavu is a curator, independent researcher, writer and organiser, and is the Director of Fire Station Artists’ Studios. Previously she was Curator of Visual Arts at Project Arts Centre and the curator, with Project, of the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2024) with the artist Eimear Walshe. Independent projects include Open the book at a different page, a research exhibition produced with artist Ciara Phillips and former members of the Derry Film and Video Workshop, which dealt with intertwined political and cultural initiatives in Derry in the 1980s.

Event location Information: This event takes place in a ground-floor, street-facing Gallery. The space contains free standing installations, sculptures and wall-hung paintings. For further accessibility information please contact Learning + Public Engagement Curator Órla Goodwin.

Exhibition continues 14 June – 16 August 2025.

These Magnetic Magnitudes
Cecilia Danell
Curated by Brenda McParland

These Magnetic Magnitudes is a solo exhibition of new and recent paintings, textiles, ceramics and film by Cecilia Danell, curated by Brenda McParland. The exhibition explores the overarching theme of contemporary landscapes and our unfulfilled yearning for that which is primal and unspoilt, filtered through the lens of psychogeography, Science Fiction and the sublime. In a practice which is rooted in materiality and process, the starting point for Danell’s work is a first-hand engagement with the landscape of the area in Sweden where she grew up. Bodily memories of moving through the places she depicts are mirrored in the physical endeavour of painting on a large scale, which creates its own spatial choreography. The landscapes Danell depicts are real places that she has encountered and photographed. However rather than offering a documentary view of these places, she uses fiction and the imaginary to speak about present and possible futures through a Science Fiction reading of the landscape. A new series of large paintings considers ideas around spectatorship and participation, inspired by the large nature dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. We are presented with scenes that invite the viewer to step into them, yet the 2D surfaces of her paintings prevent us. Danell continuously points back to this push and pull between realism, abstraction and the materiality of paint itself. She uses oil and acrylic on canvas in vivid shades of greens, purples and pinks, using acrylic washes and layers beneath the oil paint, and acrylic for drips because of its viscosity and velocity.

Danell is predominantly a painter, but also makes textile tapestries, ceramic and fabric sculptures and occasionally films. Danell recalls idyllic summer childhood memories of the Swedish countryside in her oversized fabric sculpture Lupin, 2024 which is both beautiful and treacherous as lupins are listed as an invasive species in Sweden, that should be eradicated when found in the wild. A series of ceramic sculptures in pastel shades and three large colourful appliqúe tapestries memorialise snow for future generations by playing with its properties of hiding and abstracting the underlying shapes. Echoing the snowy vistas in The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, these are imaginary “ur-forms” that touch upon the primeval, merging colourful playfulness with a solemn reminder of climate change and the state of our planet. In the same room, the film Snow Day, 2025 (15 mins) camera/editing by Danell; soundtrack by Keith Wallace/Loner Deluxe captures a first-person view of the artist moving through the snowy woods in Sweden which is both immersive and atmospheric.

A hardback catalogue with texts by Aidan Dunne and Charity Coleman will be published by Solstice Arts Centre and Kevin Kavanagh in autumn 2025.

The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday 11am – 4pm.

Kilkenny Celebrates 10 Years of Creative Community at AKA 2025
This August, the streets, galleries, and green spaces of Kilkenny will once again pulse with creativity as the Alternative Kilkenny Arts (AKA) Fringe Festival celebrates ten years of community-led, volunteer-powered artistic expression.
Running from 7–17 August, the 2025 programme features an impressive line-up of over 120 events, showcasing the talents of visual artists, performers, writers, musicians, makers, and creative collectives from across Kilkenny city and county.
This year’s highlights include a special outdoor screening of animated short films scored live by the Irish Composers’ Collective in collaboration with Cartoon Saloon, a retrospective talk on cultural figure Peter Brennan, and a landmark Emerging Artists Exhibition featuring ten rising talents at 1st floor, The Bank, Rose Inn Street, R95 Y672.
AKA remains a proud celebration of Kilkenny’s independent arts scene, placing accessibility and community engagement at its core. With events spanning theatre, craft, literature, film, music, workshops, and more, this year’s festival offers something to inspire every audience.
AKA invites locals and visitors alike to immerse themselves in ten unforgettable days of artistic exploration, connection, and celebration.
The full programme will be available on www.akafringe.com for the 18th July.

Exhibition continues 7 August – 17 August 2025.

Dublin artist Linda Proudfoot and Latvian artist Dana Sorokina have come together for a two person exhibition during the AKA Fringe Festival in Kilkenny.
Linda will exhibit a selection of her landscapes and seascapes, while Dana will present some of her vibrant flower compositions and her images of VW Classic Beetles.

Exhibition open 10am – 5pm Mon – Sat, and 12-5pm Sunday.
Curated by Tony Strickland

Through her unique interpretation of batik techniques, Trini Kenny pushes the medium beyond craft into the realm of fine art, making her work recognisable and deeply evocative. Visit her inspirational exhibition and open studio during the Kilkenny Arts Festival in the beautiful gardens of Lavistown House and step into the world batik and wax resist painting.

The Bedding Planes

There is solace in beauty and it nourishes the soul.
‘The Bedding Planes’ documents a moment in time, perhaps with tiny traces on a well worn path. Beauty is at its heart.

In geological terms a bedding plane is a surface representing contact between a deposit and a depositing medium such as water and atmosphere during a time of change and this is reflected in a difference in texture or composition, with a bedding plane representing the visible line of change. This bedding plane however takes a more nuanced form and includes works made from layers of colour, paper and clay. The pop up Gallery lies at the bottom of a long narrow ‘natural’ garden that is a haven for wildlife and biodiversity. As the viewer navigates their way to the room along a winding path through birdsong and dappled light from the surrounding trees the journey itself becomes a contemplative experience and the boundary between art and nature disappears.

The Bedding Planes is curated by Helena Gorey and shows her works on paper alongside forms and vessels in clay by Rob Pearson and Peter Scroope and introduces Roise O’Shea.

Open daily from 2.00pm to 6.00pm from the 10th to 17th August 2025.
Pop Up Gallery during Kilkenny Arts Festival, Burnchurch R95 Y0C8

Muine Bheag Arts is thrilled to welcome artist Lily O’Shea as part of COMMUNE. Lily will present a new body of work, a framework for me and you, which responds to conditions of precarity within the context of the housing crisis and points towards alternative ways of looking at space and home.

Lily will lead a tour of her public sculpture series, along with a reading by Ali O’Shea who has written a text in response to the work. This will be followed by an open discussion with members of CATU.

More information and booking here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/tour-with-artist-lily-oshea-discussion-with-catu-17th-august-2pm-tickets-1510992672759?aff=oddtdtcreator

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Lily O’Shea is a visual artist based in Cork, working across sculpture, drawing, and writing. Through woodwork, she creates quasi-sculptural forms that develop into immersive installations, integrating technical drawings and reflective texts. Lily’s research-based practice explores different methods of survival in a fluctuating ideological structure, while emphasizing the need to reclaim and redefine our relationship with time.

In 2025, Lily was awarded the Evolve Practice Award by Fire Station Artists’ Studios, where she completed a three-month residency. Recent work has featured in Bless The Corners of This House (Bloomers, Cork, 2025), The Collision Project (screen service, Dublin, 2024), and CCA Introducing (Centre for Contemporary Art, Derry, 2024). Lily is a recent recipient of the Visual Arts Bursary and Agility Award (2024), and was previously supported by the Creative Practitioner Bursary from Galway City Council in 2023.

Community Action Tenants Union (CATU) is a membership-based Union for Communities & Tenants in Ireland with active branches across the country. CATU was founded in Dublin in 2019 by a few dozen tenants, to help share resources and skills to empower themselves and their neighbours facing eviction, homelessness and housing precarity.

COMMUNE is kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Carlow Arts Office, Creative Ireland Carlow and Bagenalstown Creative Places

Sunday 17th August 2025 – 2pm

Bog Bothy is a touring collection of new work, built outcomes, and ambitious proposals toward a new peatlands architecture, presented by the Irish Architecture Foundation and 12th Field.

Bog Bothy is touring to Girley Bog, Co. Meath on 16-17 August during National Heritage Week, following a successful run in Clara.

Bog Bothy includes a new Bothy shelter, an exhibition of photographs by Shane Hynan and drawings by 12th Field, work by artist in residence Luke Casserly, and a public programme of workshops, tours and performances on our evolving relationship with Ireland’s peatlands through the lens of architecture and placemaking.

The bothy structure has been co-created with communities in Offaly, Louth and Meath and designed by architects Evelyn D’Arcy and David Jameson of 12th Field.

All events are free but must be booked in advance.

Saturday 16 August:
11:00 – 11:30 Bog Bothy Launch and Tea Ceremony
11:30 – 12:30 Guided Bothy Tour with 12th Field
13:30 – 15:00 Novel Ecologies Workshop with Fiona Nulty and Helen Flanagan
15:15 – 17:00 What A Bog Remembers – Workshop with Luke Casserly
17:30 – 19:00 An Evening with Friends of Ardee Bog

Sunday 17 August:
7:00 – 8:30 Moth Trapping Workshop
11:00 – 12:30 Bog Bothy Tour with 12th Field
13:00-15:00 Bog Lab and Zine Workshop with Elena Aitova & Kate Flood

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.

Kith & Kin: The Quilts of Gee’s Bend is a group exhibition featuring the work of African American women from a small Alabama community whose work have become symbols of Black empowerment and cultural pride. This stunning collection of textile works celebrates African American culture and heritage.

28 Feb 2025–27 Oct 2025
Gallery 3

IMMA presents Kith & Kin: The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, the first exhibition of the Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers in Ireland, co-organised with Souls Grown Deep. The Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers, a group of African American women from a small Alabama community with a 200-year tradition of quilt making, have created quilts that hold both artistic and political significance. Artistically, their work is renowned for its improvisational style, bold colours, and abstract designs, often compared to modernist art movements like abstract expressionism. Their quilts, made from recycled fabrics, are deeply rooted in African American textile traditions and showcase unique creativity in geometric patterns.

Politically, the quilts reflect resilience and self-sufficiency, as they were born out of necessity in an economically deprived, racially segregated region. The civil rights movement brought attention to these women, who became symbols of Black empowerment and cultural pride. Their craft has been exhibited in museums worldwide, highlighting the importance of marginalised voices in American history. The quilts serve as both a celebration of African American heritage and a testament to the strength and creativity of women in the face of systemic oppression.

Through the public programme IMMA will explore parallels with the textile and quilt-making traditions in Ireland.

IMMA TALKS / Lecture & Launch
The Quilts of Gee’s Bend
Raina Lampkins-Fielder
Join Raina Lampkins-Fielder, chief curator for the Souls Grown Deep Foundation for a talk on the unique quilt making tradition of Gee’s Bend, a community of over five generations of Black American quiltmakers located on the banks of the Alabama River. This talk coincides with the launch of the exhibition Kith & Kin: The Quilts of Gee’s Bend.

Thurs 27 Feb 2025, 5pm – 6pm
Johnston Suite, IMMA
Booking required – Free

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.

Thylacines, snakes and birds of prey are the unlikely animals that navigate fractured environments in the work of Ailbhe Ní Bhriain. Through ancient tales of the mythic underworld, and recurring images of stalactites and stalagmites, we experience scenes set in caves and tunnels populated by ethnic stereotypes.

‘Ní Bhriain seeks to locate our growing anxieties of crises within an odd, orphic world, where colonial and industrial legacies are fused with the consciousness of our current moment’ – Michael Dempsey.

A new series of works created for Hugh Lane Gallery, The Dream Pool Intervals is a meditation on the spectre of loss that haunts the contemporary imagination. Images of rehearsed poses and gestures, appropriated from the early days of photography (an era designed to project stability, status, worldliness and superiority) are assembled by Ní Bhriain in the works we encounter. They belie the individuals represented and concentrate instead on the construct of the medium of photography itself.

‘in the tapestries are images of destroyed architecture – gathered from multiple sources, icons of war and climate disaster that seem to define this period’ – Ailbhe Ní Bhriain.

Five large-scale jacquard tapestries form the exhibition’s centre and create a journey through emblematic iconography of past colonial repression and early technological aspirations. Powerful and eloquent, they convey complex political and dynastic messages that resist singular interpretation and echo the fragmented nature of how information is gathered and absorbed in our subconscious.

The Dream Pool Intervals is curated by Michael Dempsey, Head of Exhibitions, Hugh Lane Gallery, and will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue.

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain: The Dream Pool Intervals officially opens to the public on 27 March 2025 and runs until 28 September 2025. Admission is free.

10 April – 10 August 2025
Beit Wing (Rooms 6-10) | Tickets from €5.

Our major spring exhibition is dedicated to the pioneering Irish modernists Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone, and brings together 90 of their works of art. It explores their friendship and shared experiences while studying in Paris during the early 1920s, and traces their careers back to Ireland. The exhibition highlights the early convergences and later divergences in their styles as they developed distinct artistic voices. Featuring paintings, stained glass, and preparatory drawings, it reveals how both women were trailblazers in Irish art although remaining connected to conventional themes such as religion and landscape.

This exhibition is kindly supported by The Klesch Collection, Lead Sponsor; Friends of the National Gallery of Ireland, and the Art of Friendship Giving Circle.

The Gallery would like to thank the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media for their ongoing support.

An ambitious new group exhibition, Staying with the Trouble, inspired by author and philosopher Donna Haraway’s seminal work of the same name, opens at IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) on Friday 2 May 2025. The exhibition features over 40 Irish and Ireland-based artists whose diverse practices explore urgent themes of our time.

Pushing against social norms, Staying with the Trouble challenges us and attempts to make sense of the present, questioning interspecies relationships, ideas of transformation, and renewal. The exhibition challenges human-centric narratives, advocating for a multi-species/multi-kin perspective through sculpture, film, painting, installation and performance.

The exhibition follows Haraway’s propositions such as “Making Kin”, “Composting” and “Sowing Worlds”, inviting visitors to rethink their connections with humans, animals, and ecosystems. Other propositions include “Critters”, emphasising the agency of non-human life, while “Techno-Apocalypse” critiques dystopian views on technology, proposing a more nuanced, interconnected future.
Commenting on the exhibition Mary Cremin, Head of Programming, IMMA, said; “Staying with the Trouble is a call to rethink, reshape our views — to stay present in complexity, to unlearn human-centric ways of seeing, and to lean into the radical potential of kinship across species, materials, and worlds. This exhibition is both a provocation and an invitation — to reimagine our place in a shared, entangled future.”
There will be a screening programme of film and moving image works as part of Living Canvas at IMMA, running throughout May to September.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a live performance series on Saturday 26 July 2025.

Artists featured in the exhibition include Farouk858, Kian Benson Bailes, George Bolster, Renèe Helèna Browne, Myrid Carten, Elizabeth Cope, Redd Ekks, Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Andy Fitz, Laura Fitzgerald, Marie Foley, Paddy Graham, Aoibheann Greenan, Kerry Guinan, Austin Hearne, Atsushi Kaga, Michael Kane, Sam Keogh, Caoimhe Kilfeather, Diaa Langan, Áine Mac Giolla Bhríde, Marielle MacLeman, Alan Magee, Christopher Mahon, Michelle Malone, Colin Martin, Maria McKinney, Bea McMahon, Thaís Muniz, Bridget O’Gorman, Venus Patel, Samir Mahmood, Alice Rekab, Eoghan Ryan, Jacqui Shelton, Sonia Shiel, Katie Watchorn, Luke van Gelderen, amongst others.

Image credit: Venus Patel, ‘Still from Daisy: Prophet of the Apocalypse’ (2023). Courtesy of the Artist

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

VISUAL is pleased to present Dreamtime Ireland, an exhibition and research project by artist Sean Lynch at VISUAL and Carlow County Museum, and Artworks 2025, in conjunction with Carlow Arts Festival.

Drawn from historical and contemporary artworks and artefacts, over thirty presentations are spread throughout Carlow’s gallery and museum spaces, each exploring art’s potential to provoke, investigate and critique the shape and purpose of Irish culture.

With an emphasis on public art, social and conceptual practice, Dreamtime Ireland reveals an undercurrent of exchange and interaction between art and society, proposing artmaking as a way to live, make and share the complex world and environments we encounter today.

Featuring artworks and contributions from:

Seanie Barron, David Beattie, Mairéad Byrne, John Carson & Conor Kelly, Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty, Richard Collier, Brian Connolly & Maurice O’Connell, Avril Corroon, Alan Counihan, Paddy Critchley, Martin Folan, Paul Gregg, Raymond Griffin, Kerry Guinan, Léann Herlihy, Michael Higgins & Juana Robles, Michele Horrigan & the EVA International archive, Bernadette Kiely, Sarah Lincoln, Irish Architectural Archive, Jane McCormack & Kingscourt Brick Sculpture Symposium, Yvonne McGuinness, Nollaig Molloy, Tom Molloy, Gina Moxley, NAMACO (Han Hogan and Donal Fullam), Tom Ó Caollaí, Tina O’Connell, Olivia Plender, Robin Price, Rónán Ó Raghallaigh and George Hooker, Seán O’Riordan, John Reardon, Theo Sims, Lily Van Oost, Hermione Wiltshire.

Dreamtime Ireland and Artworks 2025 span all of VISUAL’s gallery spaces and continues in Carlow County Museum.

Welcome to the artist job centre!

What job could you imagine in your wildest dreams? What if you got paid to put whoppee cushions on all the seats in the train, or make recordings of all the birds in your neighbourhood. Artists invent their own jobs.

Artists might spend everyday drawing or dancing; making sculptures in supermarkets or performances on football pitches. They might decide to make an enormous piece of clothing or bury a time capsule. Doing the job of an artist isn’t just about making artworks in galleries, it’s about asking big questions, dreaming up ideas and imagining new ways of being in the world.

This all-ages interactive space invites you to step into an imaginary universe where there are no rules and no limits to what an artist can do. Here, you get to imagine, design and create your very own artistic job — a role that lets you explore, question, play and express yourself.

To be Opened by Niamh Flanagan, Artist, Master Printer and Program Coordinator at Graphic Studio Dublin
On Wednesday 11th June 2025 at 7pm

Navigating Space is a solo exhibition by Maria Atanacković. Bringing together works on paper, wood, and linen, the exhibition explores the construction of space through assemblage and printmaking.

Atanacković’s practice is grounded in the process of breaking down and rebuilding form, using geometric shapes, layering, and composition to investigate the balance between structure and spontaneity.

This new body of work reflects her ongoing exploration of spatial relationships. Through bold, graphic elements and carefully considered arrangements, she creates abstract compositions that echo the ways we navigate our surroundings – both physically and emotionally. Some works have a precise, architectural quality, while others evolve through a more intuitive process, where forms emerge, shift, and settle into place.

Atanacković’s interest in space extends beyond the visible, delving into the underlying frameworks that shape our sense of place and belonging. She is particularly drawn to the tension between familiarity and displacement, and how we create connections within unfamiliar environments. Navigating Space considers these ideas through material and form, inviting the viewer to engage with the work as a process of movement and discovery.

Navigating Space by Maria Atanacković will be accompanied by a programme of engagement for young people, including a response space in our First Floor Gallery.

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).

Visit The Douglas Hyde’s Summer exhibitions:
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Mohammed Sami ‘To Whom It May Concern’⁠
Gallery 1⁠
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The Artist’s Eye: Bas Jan Ader⁠
Gallery 2⁠
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13 June – 14 September 2025 ⁠

Mohammed Sami has gained recognition for his charged paintings exploring memory, conflict and loss through the familiar made strange. His first solo exhibition in Ireland brings together a group of major new canvases alongside a selection of works made over the last five years. He is one of four artists shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize.⁠
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Working directly onto canvas with brushes, pallet knives and spray paint, Sami creates textures, surfaces and details building the composition as a whole. Mining personal experiences to ground his work and influenced by Arabic literature and poetry, Sami replaces images of trauma with oblique references to loss or conflict. Although absent of the human form, the settings, everyday objects, and shadows, in his paintings convey traces of human presence. He uses medium, scale, and title, each cultivating the other to create charged and haunting works.⁠
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Acknowledging the crucial role artists play in influencing and shaping other artistic practices, ‘The Artist’s Eye’ series asks those exhibiting in Gallery 1 to invite an artist of influence to present work in Gallery 2. In this instalment Mohammed Sami has selected the work of artist Bas Jan Ader entitled ‘I’m Too Sad To Tell You’ (1971) to be presented.⁠
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Visit The Douglas Hyde on Wednesday – Sunday 12pm – 5pm, Thursday 12pm – 6pm.

Official opening: Sunday 15 June, 3:00pm
Olivier Cornet Gallery, Dublin

Artists: Annika Berglund, Hugh Cummins, Mary A. Fitzgerald, David Fox, Nickie Hayden, Miriam McConnon, Sheila Naughton, Yanny Petters, Kelly Ratchford, Vicky Smith and Colin Eaton.

As this year marks the 100th anniversary of the 1925 Paris Art Deco Expo, the Bloomsday exhibition at the Olivier Cornet Gallery is an artists’ response to this period during which James Joyce’s Ulysses was published. The show features work by our gallery artists and invited artists who have explored exterior signs of art deco in Dublin, from architectural features in government buildings, through bathing shelters, libraries to hotels and cinemas, for instance. The show also showcases personal interpretations of that period from family lore through shared stories to current events.

This exhibition is part of this year’s official programme of the Bloomsday Festival organised by the James Joyce Centre Dublin. Out of Lines runs until the 24th of August 2025.

Image: Yanny Petters, ‘Daisy, The language of Flowers’, enamel on glass, 24.5cmx19.5cm. Based on the Language of Flowers mentioned in The Lotus Eaters chapter when Bloom gets a letter from Martha.

SOFT SURGE

Shirani Bolle | Ursula Burke | Rachel Fallon | Dee Mulrooney | Lucy Peters | Emily Waszak | The Irish Names Project.

The exhibition will be launched by Laura McCormack, Acting Arts Officer for Westmeath Arts Office on Friday 27th June at 6:00pm. All are welcome to attend. The exhibition will continue until Sunday 7th September.

SOFT SURGE is a group exhibition that critically engages with themes of identity, motherhood, women’s collectivity, grief, resistance, activism, and sociopolitical dissent within the context of contemporary Ireland. Through a range of practices and processes including sculpture, embroidery, weaving, knitting, tapestry, film, photography, and mixed media, the artists featured in this exhibition explore the soft power and radical potential of textiles.

SOFT SURGE features newly commissioned works by Emily Waszak and Dee Mulrooney, alongside existing works by contemporary female artists who mobilise cloth and fibre as both tactile material and affective framework. Drawing inspiration from the Moirae, the Greek Fates who spun, measured, and cut the threads of life, Soft Surge posits its exhibiting artists as weavers of narratives shaped by trauma, resilience, and embodied political agency.

This exhibition has been kindly supported by The Arts Council.

Exhibition Dates: 27.06.25 – 13.09.25
Launch Event: Friday, June 27th from 6pm

Exhibiting Artists: David Beattie, Ala Buisir, Cecilia Bullo, Pauline Cummins, Lauren Kelly, Maria McKinney, and Fiona Whelan

Together in Commune, is the first exhibition of Rua Red’s Studio Programme, curated by Marysia Wieckiewicz and featuring work by Rua Red’s current resident studio artists: David Beattie, Ala Buisir, Cecilia Bullo, Pauline Cummins, Lauren Kelly, Maria McKinney, and Fiona Whelan.

This exhibition marks an important moment for Rua Red, highlighting the depth and breadth of the practices nurtured and supported within these walls. Working closely with the curator in the months leading up to the exhibition, each artist presents work that reflects their individual practice, while collectively exploring themes central to socially engaged contemporary art.

Rua Red’s Studio Programme, awarded through panel selection for a period of one to three years, is a core pillar of the organisation’s mission; to support artists at every stage of their career. The studios at Rua Red provide artists with time, space, and a supportive community that encourages sustained and critical artistic practice. In turn, the presence of these artists in the building fundamentally shapes Rua Red as a centre for enquiry and experimentation. Their work contributes to a vibrant and evolving ecology of ideas that extends beyond the studio walls, enriching both the organisation and the wider cultural landscape of South Dublin County and beyond.

Dysphoric Euphoria presents polarising extremes of queer existence. Within this exhibition Peter Bradley and Stephen Doyle explore the joys and the hardships of Queer experiences through painting. Taking on themes of societal exclusion, religious power, and identity in a contemporary Irish society.

The titular duality is divided by the artists. Doyle manifests Dysphoria by allowing discomfort to become tangible through their handling of paint and installation work. They depict some of the major obstacles facing the community to challenge systems of power and oppression in its various forms. Bradley’s collection portrays the Euphoric through themes of community, joy as a form of resistance, and liberation from gender norms through playful collages of paint, plexiglass and personality.

Accompanying the paintings within the show are texts by El Reid- Buckley, FELISPEAKS and William Keohane.

Kerlin Gallery is pleased to present Pictures of You, guest curated by Miles Thurlow (Co-founder of WORKPLACE).

The exhibition brings together 16 international and multigenerational artists, whose of images, objects and actions evoke specific, often fleeting, moments whilst simultaneously revealing incisive reflections on time, memory and social structures.

Eve Ackroyd | Simeon Barclay | James Cabaniuk | Samuel Laurence Cunnane | Hollis Frampton | Ryan Gander | Nan Goldin | Merlin James | Sooim Jeong | Laura Lancaster | Rachel Lancaster | William McKeown | Robin Megannity | Wang Pei | Hannah Perry | Ki Yoong

Opening Reception: Thursday 3 July, 6–8pm
4 July – 23 August 2025.

Maeve McCarthy, Returning / Heritage

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council is pleased to present Returning / Heritage, an exhibition of new artworks by Maeve McCarthy. The exhibition opens at the Municipal Gallery, dlr LexIcon in Dún Laoghaire on Sunday 6 July and runs until Wednesday 3 September 2025, admission is free.

The exhibition features new paintings, charcoal drawings, objects and a film. Through her work, McCarthy explores her mother’s family story, from their roots in County Down to her grandparents’ move from Kilmainham to Sandycove in the 1930s. She revisits gardens, houses, and familiar paths from the past. Some are still standing, others have changed or disappeared. The exhibition invites visitors to think about what is passed down through generations and how memories continue to live on even after physical places change. It is a gentle and thoughtful look at identity, belonging, and the power of letting go.

Returning / Heritage is the result of a dlr Visual Art Commission, which was awarded to Maeve McCarthy. The commission gives artists the opportunity to create a new body of work that is responsive to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. It is funded by the Arts Council and supported by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council.

Alongside the exhibition, dlr Arts Office will run a programme of accompanying talks, workshops and events. This offers many opportunities for people of all ages to interact with the gallery in different ways, learning about and trying out different art-making techniques. For further details, visit the website: www.dlrcoco.ie/arts

Contact: Ciara King/Carolyn Brown DLR Arts Office, T:236 2759 /
Email: arts@dlrcoco.ie

Exhibition continues 14 June – 16 August 2025.

These Magnetic Magnitudes
Cecilia Danell
Curated by Brenda McParland

These Magnetic Magnitudes is a solo exhibition of new and recent paintings, textiles, ceramics and film by Cecilia Danell, curated by Brenda McParland. The exhibition explores the overarching theme of contemporary landscapes and our unfulfilled yearning for that which is primal and unspoilt, filtered through the lens of psychogeography, Science Fiction and the sublime. In a practice which is rooted in materiality and process, the starting point for Danell’s work is a first-hand engagement with the landscape of the area in Sweden where she grew up. Bodily memories of moving through the places she depicts are mirrored in the physical endeavour of painting on a large scale, which creates its own spatial choreography. The landscapes Danell depicts are real places that she has encountered and photographed. However rather than offering a documentary view of these places, she uses fiction and the imaginary to speak about present and possible futures through a Science Fiction reading of the landscape. A new series of large paintings considers ideas around spectatorship and participation, inspired by the large nature dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. We are presented with scenes that invite the viewer to step into them, yet the 2D surfaces of her paintings prevent us. Danell continuously points back to this push and pull between realism, abstraction and the materiality of paint itself. She uses oil and acrylic on canvas in vivid shades of greens, purples and pinks, using acrylic washes and layers beneath the oil paint, and acrylic for drips because of its viscosity and velocity.

Danell is predominantly a painter, but also makes textile tapestries, ceramic and fabric sculptures and occasionally films. Danell recalls idyllic summer childhood memories of the Swedish countryside in her oversized fabric sculpture Lupin, 2024 which is both beautiful and treacherous as lupins are listed as an invasive species in Sweden, that should be eradicated when found in the wild. A series of ceramic sculptures in pastel shades and three large colourful appliqúe tapestries memorialise snow for future generations by playing with its properties of hiding and abstracting the underlying shapes. Echoing the snowy vistas in The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, these are imaginary “ur-forms” that touch upon the primeval, merging colourful playfulness with a solemn reminder of climate change and the state of our planet. In the same room, the film Snow Day, 2025 (15 mins) camera/editing by Danell; soundtrack by Keith Wallace/Loner Deluxe captures a first-person view of the artist moving through the snowy woods in Sweden which is both immersive and atmospheric.

A hardback catalogue with texts by Aidan Dunne and Charity Coleman will be published by Solstice Arts Centre and Kevin Kavanagh in autumn 2025.

The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday 11am – 4pm.

Lucy Peters is a visual artist based in Co.Monaghan, Ireland. Her work consists of large textile sculptures, paper and text. She is interested in consumerism and how we hold value in certain items, especially clothing. Her sculptures are made by dismantling discarded items of clothing into material strips, which are then slowly woven and knotted into large textured forms. Each piece can take up to five months to complete, and each work is composed of material that has been recycled, donated or discarded.

Our First Solo Award offers support and funding at a key point in the careers of professional visual artists in the North East region who have yet to present a solo show.

We are delighted to present Primate by Irish artist Daphne Wright. This work is one of a series of sculptures by Wright which explores the relationship between humans, animals and medicine. The sculpture was cast from a mould from a recently dead rhesus monkey at the scientific institution, Wisconsin National Primate Research Centre.

The artist explains, “To approach the problem of what we humans do by involving animals in our human life-saving research, the central act of making the artwork was to access this stage of the animal’s life-death via its direct physical form. The primate is our kin and our stand in. Not only in medicine but also for the heart and the imagination. It is an image of the human. Everything about how it might be like us is filled with pathos: its body, its proximity, its delicate biology, its expression. The rhesus monkey is our ancestor, our antecedent past and passed away, an object of reverie, honour, compassion and mourning.”

This notable addition to the collection continues to strengthen the Gallery’s mission of acquiring works by Irish and international artists to reflect evolving art practices. The current display of Primate coincides with Wright’s solo exhibition Deep Rooted Things in The Ashmolean Museum. Oxford which was conceived in partnership with Hugh Lane Gallery. The exhibition catalogue is available in the HLG Bookshop.

Solomon Fine Art is delighted to host its annual Summer Group Exhibition. A vibrant mix of paintings, sculpture and print by Ireland’s leading artists.

Including work by John Behan RHA, Margo Banks, Leah Beggs, Comhghall Casey, Tom Climent, Clifford Collie, Eamon Colman, Julie Cusack, Orla de Bri, Ana Duncan, Margaret Egan, Bridget Flinn, Carol Hodder, Stephanie Hess, Bernadette Madden, Maggie Morrisson, Eilis O’Connell RHA, Helen O’Connell, Helen O’Sullivan – Tyrrell, Michael Quane RHA, Bob Quinn, John Short, Corban Walker, Michael Wann & many more.

This extensive and varied exhibition presented in our bright, city centre space represents the best of contemporary Irish art and is well worth visiting this summer.

SALON OF DIÚLTAÍODH
A joyful uprising in art, spirit, and solidarity.
In 1863, a group of artists rejected by the official Paris Salon sparked something unexpected — not just an exhibition, but a movement. The 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘯 𝘥𝘦𝘴 𝘙𝘦𝘧𝘶𝘴é𝘴 became a turning point in art history, opening space for bold, new voices and reshaping the future of creativity. This show is offered in that same spirit — a celebration of works that didn’t find a place in the usual halls, but still pulse with life, vision, and possibility. We invite artists to share pieces that were turned away by institutions over the past year — not as an end, but as a beginning. This is about honoring the full creative journey: the misfits, the almosts, the not-yets. It’s about coming together to build something more open, more honest, and more alive. Let’s create a space where refusal becomes resonance — and where connection, not competition, takes the lead.
Curated by @ishmaelclaxtonphotos, Salon of Diúltaíodh is a gathering place for those who make with heart, question the rules, and carry forward the belief that art is for everyone, not just a chosen few. Will have over 50 amazing artist from across the country

In her new experimental moving image work The Glass Booth / An Both Gloine, artist Jenny Brady casts a cinematic gaze on the figure of the interpreter, exploring the interpreting profession and the contemporary landscape of interpretation. Through vignettes set in both extreme and familiar environments, the film portrays the processes of listening, speaking, and forgetting within acts of formal and informal interpretation. This film is a study of the complex, intersubjective nature of interpreters’ work, placing them at the centre, rather than intermediaries that blend into the background. Brady seeks to illuminate the interpretive act – an elaborate, sensory process of listening, decoding and responding.

The film emerges from research into the birth of the interpreting profession, which is less than a century old. Simultaneous interpretation technology, the language interpretation system that allows interpreters to hear and speak at the same time, was first employed prominently during the Nuremberg Trials that took place between 1945 and 1946, developing in direct relation to modern international diplomatic relations and the founding of the United Nations. This project builds on themes explored in Brady’s recent films, Music for Solo Performer (2022) and Receiver (2019) which looked at the complexities of technologically mediated communication.

The Glass Booth examines the art of interpretation as it extends to four different arenas; Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev meeting at the Geneva Summit in 1985, an asylum seeker interview at the International Protection Office, a Young Interpreters programme in a Dublin primary school, and a European conference interpreter translating into target languages in real time. In each setting, though stakes are high, slips are inevitable. One interpreter speaks of his reliance on muscle memory to do the job, likening his work in simultaneous interpretation to his former career as a paramedic and interest in rally driving. Probing the negotiation between intention and expression, the artwork lays bare how interpretation is essential to humankind’s survival. The film will be screened in two, alternating versions: one with subtitles and the other with audiovisual descriptions for blind or low vision audiences. The Glass Booth has been generously funded through the Arts Council’s Film Project Award and premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh 2025.
Text by Aisling Clark.

Screening Times: 11:00am, 11:40am, 12:20pm, 1:00pm, 1:40pm, 2:20pm, 3:00pm, 3:40pm, 4:20pm, 5:00pm.
The film will be screened in two, alternating versions: one with subtitles and the other with audiovisual descriptions for Blind or low vision audiences.

Alan Butler
Mary FitzGerald
Damien Flood
Mark Joyce
Sorcha McNamara
Bridget Riley
Oisín Tozer

Exhibition dates : 1 August – 19 September 2025
Opening reception : Thursday 31 July 2025 5-8 pm

Earthly Delights is in the title of Hieronymous Bosch’s early 16th Century triptych The Garden of Eathly Delights. This painting charts the Creation, the Birth and Fall of man and woman. It was painted in The Netherlands in the 1490s or early 1500s. It is currently in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. It has captivated audiences and artists since that time, including some Irish artists and one or two in this show.

The Garden theme is also continued in Green On Red Gallery’s summer Earthly Delights exhibition looking at artists whose work looks at life and death and society, not to mention a world in crisis.

Garrett Cormican’s latest exhibition, Trading Places, explores shifting perspectives – between cities, cultures, time, and identity. His paintings of Istanbul, a city where past and present collide, capture the pulse of its architecture, markets, and bustling trade routes. Vibrant still-life works, echoing both modernist and classical styles, celebrate the vitality of food, movement, and cultural exchange.

Cormican, a self-taught painter, curator, and author of Camille Souter: The Mirror in the Sea, has exhibited widely across Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Opening reception:
Thursday 31 July, 6pm

‘Faigh Amach’ is an initiative by Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (TBG+S) in partnership with Culture Ireland and Southwark Park Galleries (SPG), London, to support an artist in presenting their first solo exhibition outside Ireland.

Roughly translating as ‘discover’, ‘Faigh Amach’ takes place as a group exhibition at TBG+S in Summer 2025, bringing together three artists selected through an open call process in 2024: Ella Bertilsson, Kathy Tynan, Emily Waszak. One of the three exhibiting artists will be invited to present their first international solo exhibition at SPG Lake Gallery in Spring 2026. During the planning and duration of ‘Faigh Amach’, SPG Director Judith Carlton and Deputy Director Charlotte Baker will conduct in-person and online studio visits with the three artists, as well as visiting the exhibition at TBG+S before making the selection for their programme.

Ella Bertilsson uses images and materials related to pop culture and the aesthetics of nostalgia to evoke a shared sense of memory and place. Her installations, which often incorporate film and performance, use the visual language of magical realism and absurdism to conjure darkly humorous and dreamlike sensory environments. The clash of bizarreness and naivety reflects the impact of anxiety and precarity in everyday life. Bertilsson’s installation for ‘Faigh Amach’ creates a new encounter with a recent film work, ‘A PEANUT WORM’S DREAM’, as viewers nestle into an immersive interior space behind a mountain scene of a photographic backdrop. Now emerging from the film itself, some of its characters – a fish, and a goat/deer – begin to populate their real-world surroundings outside of the confines of the film’s storage unit setting.

Kathy Tynan’s paintings of familiar cityscapes and domestic scenes illuminate moments of affection, intimacy and curiosity. Rather than focussing her gaze on monumental landmarks, Tynan instead attributes value to that which is otherwise overlooked. Her semi-autobiographical subjects include her own family and friends but speak more broadly to shared enthusiasms, experiences of care, community, and relationships. Tynan’s group of recent paintings in the exhibition collate a number of personal scenes from memory and family photographs. Patterned duvets and pyjamas conflate timelines between the artist’s own childhood and her experience as a mother with a young son. The sequence of paintings appear as a panorama of cinematic flashbacks.

Emily Waszak’s textile and assemblage works are informed by rituals of her Japanese cultural heritage, experiences of grief and the landscape of her home in Donegal. Using both ancient and contemporary weaving techniques, alongside the collection and display of found materials and other hand-made objects, Waszak combines processes that transcend time and place to find meaning in loss and understand how to access otherworldliness. Waszak has produced several large-scale woven works for the exhibition using a combination of discarded waste textiles gathered from industrial sites in Dublin, and fragments of fabric with deep personal significance. The textiles loom above a group of clay vessels holding ceremonial objects such as animal bones, which can be used as shakers in a form of incantation to connect with the spirit world.

Ella Bertilsson was born in Umeå, Sweden, and works in Dublin and Kilkenny. Her recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include The Horse, Dublin (2025); Ballina Art Centre (2024); The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon (2023); The Complex, Dublin (2022).

Kathy Tynan was born and works in Dublin. Her recent solo exhibitions include Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin (2024); Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise (2022); Highlanes Gallery (with Andrew Vickery), Drogheda (2020); The LAB, Dublin (2019).

Emily Waszak was born in North Carolina, United States, and works between Dublin and Donegal. Her recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny (2026); Pallas Projects, Dublin (2024); TU Dublin (2023).

Southwark Park Galleries is an interdisciplinary arts organisation in South East London. Through a locally relevant and internationally significant programme of exhibitions, performances and public engagement, their mission is to connect people using the intersection of art, nature and culture to facilitate meaning and wellbeing across communities. Established in 1984, they have a thriving reputation as a test site for experimental practice by commissioning artists at a critical stage to make their most ambitious work for exhibition.

SO Fine Art Editions Presents: Summer Show 2025
02 August 2025 – 27 August 2025

The summer sun is out, and with it comes the return of SO Fine Art Editions’ highly anticipated annual Summer Show. Celebrating the lightness of the season and the joy of discovery, this group show brings together a vibrant array of contemporary artworks, featuring fine art prints, paintings, ceramics and photography.

This year, we’re delighted to welcome several new and exciting artists into the fold, joining a diverse line-up of established names and emerging talent. The exhibition presents a unique opportunity to acquire work from artists you’ve long admired, or to fall in love with someone new.

Exhibiting Artists Include
Yoko Akino, Jean Bardon, Ailbhe Barrett, Peter Bradley, Ria Czerniak-LeBov, Sorca O’Farrell, Mary A. Fitzgerald, Niamh Flanagan, Taffina Flood, Debbie Godsell, Alastair Keady, James Kearney, Richard Lawlor, Stephen Lawlor, Kate MacDonagh, Bernadette Madden, Emmanuel Matt, David McGinn, Mary O’Connor, John O’Flynn, Emma O’Hara, Sophia O’Sullivan, Padraig Parle, and Pascal Ungerer.

New Artists to the Gallery
We are delighted to introduce three artists making their debut with SO Fine Art Editions:

– Pascal Ungerer explores the tension between the built and natural world, drawing attention to liminal spaces, structures and the thresholds between rural and urban edges. He reimagines real landscapes to reflect on ecological degradation, peripherality and speculative futures in the age of the Anthropocene.

– Peter Bradley creates large, mixed media figurative works that examine gender, identity, sex and sexuality beyond binary norms. Using layered transparency, light and reflectivity in his work has allowed Bradley to analyse the reciprocal relationship between the viewer, the work and the environment – highlighting how perception and interaction shape understanding.

– John O’Flynn is a Galway born artist based in Dublin whose work merges graffiti, street art and industrial design. Using spray paint, acrylic and watercolour, he reflects on urban and natural landscapes, light and introspection. His expressive compositions explore everyday monotony and perception, aiming to forge connection through shared reflection.

A Unifying Thread
What ties these works together is a sense of reflection on landscape, on identity and on our evolving cultural moment. Each piece encourages the viewer to pause, consider and connect with the shifting worlds — both outer and inner — that these artists illuminate.

All artworks are available for purchase online and in the gallery.

Gallery opening hours are 10am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday, 11am to 5pm on Saturday. We are closed Sunday and bank holidays.

Kilgraney Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition featuring a collection of work in jewellery, textiles, ceramics, sculpture and prints.
This exhibition brings together a range of handcrafted pieces, all made with care, attention to detail, and a strong connection to natural materials and traditional techniques. From delicate jewellery and richly textured textiles to expressive prints and hand-formed ceramics, each piece reflects the artist’s love of making and working with their hands.

Kilgraney Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition featuring a collection of work in jewellery, textiles, ceramics, sculpture and prints. This exhibition brings together a range of handcrafted pieces, all made with care, attention to detail, and a strong connection to natural materials and traditional techniques. From delicate jewellery and richly textured textiles to expressive prints and hand-formed ceramics, each piece reflects the artist’s love of making and working with their hands.

ART EXHIBITION – TOM BYRNE
Title: “ I can buy myself flowers”.

5th August-30th September

Tom Byrne, born in Dublin in 1962, is an Irish artist known for his diverse range of work, including portraits, landscapes, and abstract pieces, often exploring themes of Irish history, culture, and spirituality. He studied at Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design and later in Berlin, drawing inspiration from the Bauhaus tradition, Irish writers like Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, and contemporary issues. Byrne is also recognized for his involvement in the punk movement, which influenced some of his early work, including album cover designs and street art. Tom was commissioned to do portraits by Hollywood filmmaker Elizabeth Banks, Matthew Rhys and Kerri Russell. In 2018, he was commissioned to create a piece for Pop Francis’s visit to Lithuania, which now hangs in the Vatican. . Tom Byrne’s style is very unique, he creates luxurious textures in nuanced, lush layers of paint and structured layers of colour, mediated by his own aesthetic experiences. Swirls of jewel-like colours transcend opaque, opulent washes of tone. Furthermore, he utilizes wax to create a luminous tangible surface which creates a multi-sensory experience, engaging the viewer not just on a visual level, but through a tactile experience as well.

Kilkenny Celebrates 10 Years of Creative Community at AKA 2025
This August, the streets, galleries, and green spaces of Kilkenny will once again pulse with creativity as the Alternative Kilkenny Arts (AKA) Fringe Festival celebrates ten years of community-led, volunteer-powered artistic expression.
Running from 7–17 August, the 2025 programme features an impressive line-up of over 120 events, showcasing the talents of visual artists, performers, writers, musicians, makers, and creative collectives from across Kilkenny city and county.
This year’s highlights include a special outdoor screening of animated short films scored live by the Irish Composers’ Collective in collaboration with Cartoon Saloon, a retrospective talk on cultural figure Peter Brennan, and a landmark Emerging Artists Exhibition featuring ten rising talents at 1st floor, The Bank, Rose Inn Street, R95 Y672.
AKA remains a proud celebration of Kilkenny’s independent arts scene, placing accessibility and community engagement at its core. With events spanning theatre, craft, literature, film, music, workshops, and more, this year’s festival offers something to inspire every audience.
AKA invites locals and visitors alike to immerse themselves in ten unforgettable days of artistic exploration, connection, and celebration.
The full programme will be available on www.akafringe.com for the 18th July.

Opening Launch: Wednesday 6th August at 7pm The Louth Plein Air Art Exhibition is immensely proud to showcase the fabulous artworks created en plein air over two days in the stunning Baltray and Anaverna House, Ravensdale. When you visit this show you shall see many different perspectives and compositions chosen by the artists to paint. The artists’ experience painting outdoors can vary from novice to professional – travelling from local areas, neighbouring counties and the UK to participate. The festival which began in 2021 during Covid times as a one-day event has since become two-days visiting Beaulieu House, Carlingford, Clogherhead, Ravensdale and Drogheda in the past. No booking Required

Opening Launch: Wednesday 6th August at 7pm

The Louth Plein Air Art Exhibition is immensely proud to showcase the fabulous artworks created en plein air over two days in the stunning Baltray and Anaverna House, Ravensdale. When you visit this show you shall see many different perspectives and compositions chosen by the artists to paint.
The artists’ experience painting outdoors can vary from novice to professional – travelling from local areas, neighbouring counties and the UK to participate. The festival which began in 2021 during Covid times as a one-day event has since become two-days visiting Beaulieu House, Carlingford, Clogherhead, Ravensdale and Drogheda in the past.
No booking Required

– Opening Times: Thursday 7 August to Friday 19 September, 11.30am to 5.30pm
– Open daily for Kilkenny Arts Festival, then Thursday to Saturday weekly

‘beyond, beneath, Beside’ explores the site of the Tea Houses and their proximity to the River Nore and its nearby tributary the River Breaghagh. During her residency, artist Kate Fahey investigated the locale, including Talbot’s Inch model arts and crafts village, the former Greenvale Woollen Mills, and engaged with the rich subterranean, cultural and industrial history associated with the rivers, including the great flood in 1947.

Drawing on materials, forms and motifs relevant to the historical arts and crafts revival in Kilkenny, the installation positions the neighbouring River Breaghagh (translates as the deceitful river) as a swirling, twisting and uneasy presence, a trickster figure, liable to rise and surge unpredictably. Situating tactile encounters with the material world at the centre of this inquiry, the exhibition poetically echoes a sense of networked and interconnected resonances across time and space, situated beyond, beneath and beside the riverbank.

Curated by Rachel Botha.
Design by Emmet Brown.

Kate Fahey is an artist based between Kilkenny and London, working with sound, sculpture, moving image, print and installation. She has shown her work at spaces including the ICA London, VISUAL Carlow, the Bluecoat Liverpool, the CCArt Andratx, Arti et Amicitiae Amsterdam and Pallas Projects Dublin. She received an MA in Fine Art Print at the Royal College of Art, London and completed a practice-based PhD at the University of the Arts London in 2020. She is a senior lecturer in Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University.

The Tea Houses are situated by the River Nore in Kilkenny city centre and have been acquired by Kilkenny Arts Office to host an art programme that encourages a sense of community and active citizenship.

Kindly supported by Kilkenny Arts Office, Kilkenny County Council, ArtLinks and Arts Council, Ireland.

RADICAL ACTS
JARED DEERY, JUDI KEESHAN, PAZ MALLEA, RACHEL OSTROW, TIL WILL

It is indeed a radical act of love just to sit down and be quiet for a time by yourself.
Jon Kabat-Zinn

When you think of New York, you think of art. The city has vied for contention of Capital of the art scene for a century, just as countries clamber over each other for geopolitical positioning.
The art scene of New York is tremendous. The myriad of galleries offer spaces where you get fully absorbed in art. It shocks and it awes. The Metropolitan, the Whitney, the Guggenheim. Legendary spots for art gazers. A compendium of art history contained in a few square miles of land. The array is astonishing.
New York has sent out ripples of influence and inspiration for decades. There is a vision and quest among the practitioners of art of New York that sets the cadence for the rest of the art world. The energy is real. You can feel it. Amidst this competitive and vigorous scene there is a generation of painters, raising their heads above the parapet, poking their brushes trough the dense city jungle. Signalling to the world their creations that have gestated in quiet, old industrial corners of Brooklyn. Amidst the exaggerated mayhem of the city, imagine a painter completely absorbed by the canvas, in an epicentre of perfect calm, painting for now.
In this light we present five radical painters currently working in Brooklyn, New York who present their work together in Dublin for the first time.

Image: Rachel Ostrow, She’s Got It, 2022.

Through her unique interpretation of batik techniques, Trini Kenny pushes the medium beyond craft into the realm of fine art, making her work recognisable and deeply evocative. Visit her inspirational exhibition and open studio during the Kilkenny Arts Festival in the beautiful gardens of Lavistown House and step into the world batik and wax resist painting.