What’s On around Ireland

Exhibition continues from the 7th of August to the 27th of September 2025

(Un)Bound, this year’s August Craft Month exhibition, invited contemporary craft makers to address the context of binding and/or unbinding, showing us that the creative process is not linear and not the same for everyone. A yearly highlight of the much-anticipated month-long celebration of craft which takes place across the island of Ireland in August, the exhibition celebrates and profiles excellence in the NI craft sector. The works on display include jewellery, glass, textile art, ceramics, wood and mixed media.

Exhibiting makers: Adele Pound, Alison Lowry, Anna Donovan, Anne Earls Boylan, Cameron & Breen, Celine Traynor, Duncan Legate, Eagle Banyte, Emma Bourke, Joanna Komorowska, Karena Ryan, Patricia Kelly, Patricia Millar, Rachel Leary, Ruth Osborne, Scott Benefield, Stuart Cairns, Sue Cathcart, Ursula McGivern, Zoe Gibson.

Through the Connecting Communities Project funded by IFI, we are delighted to present a group exhibition and sale of unique handmade art and crafts by Donegal artists/creatives and young people from the cross-border Connecting Youth Group. Please drop-in to meet the Makers & enjoy this exciting group exhibition!

Exhibition continues from the 12th of July to the 20th of September 2025

Curated by Eamonn Maxwell, Another Time Undone considers the impact of family, land, and legacy on artistic practice. Vivienne Dick, Adrian O’Carroll and Jill Quigley were all born in Donegal, but this show is not about Donegal – well not directly.

The exhibition features new and existing work that explores the residue of life in the places the artists were born and since, through practices that eschew the touristy imagery of this part of Ireland. These artists may be considered lens-based, but this is not a photography exhibition. It is a journey through image making from different perspectives and using individual outputs that are playful and poignant. Each record time in a unique way.

Vivienne Dick makes single and multi-screen works which combine elements of documentary, performance, and fiction. A Skinny Little Man Attacked Daddy was filmed on a Betacam camera in Donegal in 1994, documenting the daily lives of her siblings and wider family circle. This is the first time this work has been exhibited in the county. The photographs in the exhibition were made in recent months using a medium format camera as part of her ongoing research into the landscape of Northwest Ireland.

For Another Time Undone, Adrian O’Carroll has made a new body of work that develops his ongoing investigations into a world that is quiet, dark, isolated and fragile. He is looking at our relationship with nature and ourselves through photographs that depict urban and rural landscapes, as well as subjects close to him yet unidentifiable to the viewer. Maghera, his largest work to date, shows the view from within the cave as we gaze towards an empty beach and the Atlantic Ocean beyond.

Playful subversion lies at the heart of Jill Quigley’s practice, exploring the consequences of making simple creative gestures in architectural space. Working with installation and photography she aims to form an awkward relationship with the practical aspects of a site. In this exhibition she has created a new work Frames, frames, frames (wreck tangle) that references an abandoned rural cottage on the Inishowen Peninsula through photographic and sculptural elements, as well as a section of wall reclaimed from the hallway of the property.

The exhibition is accompanied by a commissioned essay by Clare Gallagher.

The Regional Cultural Centre’s exhibition programme is supported by Donegal County Council and The Arts Council of Ireland.

Exhibition continues from the 13th of September 2025 to the 18th of October 2025

This September, Graphic Studio Gallery presents One Tree, a new body of Mokuhanga prints and unique works by Ed Miliano. The exhibition is supported by IPUT Real Estate Dublin.

The show centres on a single tree — a recurring subject that appears throughout the works, explored across changing seasons, moods, and materials.

Miliano lived in Japan for four years, where he studied traditional Mokuhanga printmaking with Master printer Takahashi Yo. In One Tree, he revisits this centuries-old technique – making it his own – combining it with collage, painting, and gold leaf. His materials include pages from vintage books and magazines, hand-painted and printed papers, and Japanese Chiyogami papers, all layered to create depth and texture.

In one series, the tree is shown through the four seasons, each on a plain white background. In another, it appears against a luminous gold ground, evoking the gilded surfaces of classical Japanese screen paintings. In some of the works, he draws on Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, using Bosch’s fantastical birds to animate the branches in a surreal fusion of print and paint.

Originally from New York, Miliano studied at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He now lives and works in Dublin, Ireland, and is a member of Graphic Studio Dublin. His practice spans painting, sculpture, and printmaking, and his work is held in a range of public and private collections including the Department of Foreign Affairs, IPUT, OPW, Arthur Cox, and Joseph Walshe Studios.

Art Historian Dr Matthew Whyte offers a new lecture series, which takes the audience on an art-filled journey through the often beautiful, sometimes scandalous, and always fascinating moments in the development of Western civilisation.

Week 1: The Pre-Raphaelites & The Birth of Modernism
In this first week, we explore the artists who looked back in order to move forward in the first breaths of modernism. Famously referred to as the Pre-Raphaelites, a name which these artists coined for themselves, the group looked back to the art of the Middle Ages as an act of resistance again the Royal Academy, whose control over artistic production and education was increasingly being perceived to be unjust. Pre-Raphaelite art draws inspiration from literature and nature, focusing on creating emotionally and spiritually evocative work. In this lecture, we examine the innovation of artists such as John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, and William Holman Hunt, also exploring the impact their thinking had in the 19th-century Arts & Craft Movement and the Gothic Revival. Meanwhile, in France, another group of artists looked to the here and now to drive change through their art. The Realists sought an innovative solution that would shed light on the social inequalities that defined modern life by doing something never done before: depicting working class life as it really was. In this way, Gustave Courbet, Jean François Millet, and others became artist-activists driving change through painting ordinary working people for the first time in the history of art.

1. Tues 16 September
The Pre-Raphaelites & The Birth of Modernism

2. Tues 23 September
Impressionism & Modern Life

3. Tues 30 September
Post-Impressionism

4. Tues 7 October
The Artist’s Inner World – Expressionism & Surrealism

5. Tues 14 October
The New Industrial Era – Futurism to Pop Art

6. Tues 21 October
The World Transformed – Cubism to Abstract Art

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

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

Join artist Deirdre Frost and curator Katie O’Grady on 17th September 1–2pm at GOMA Gallery Waterford for a lunchtime Q&A about Deirdre’s practice and her most recent body of work, 𝘉𝘭𝘶𝘦 𝘚𝘬𝘪𝘦𝘴, 𝘉𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘌𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘩: a solo exhibition running until 27 September 2025 at GOMA Waterford.

𝗪𝗲𝗱𝗻𝗲𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝟭𝟳𝘁𝗵 𝗦𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 | 𝟭-𝟮𝗽𝗺 | 𝗚𝗢𝗠𝗔 𝗚𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘆, 𝟲/𝟳 𝗟𝗼𝗺𝗯𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗲𝘁, 𝗪𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗱

All welcome! Free event, no booking required.

Curated by Zeda the Architect, this exhibition explores memory, identity, and belonging through a contemporary portrait of Ireland.

Featuring artists from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, it brings together painting, photography, storytelling, sound, and object-based installation.

Each contribution offers a fragment of lived experience, revealing an Éire that is intimate, layered, and evolving. Moving through personal memory and cultural symbolism, the works reframe Ireland not as a fixed identity, but as a shared, shifting narrative shaped by migration, joy, loss, community, and imagination.

It offers a space to remember, to reclaim, and to reimagine. Visitors are invited to engage with the past, the present, and what’s still becoming. This is both a love letter and a challenge. What does Ireland look like when seen by all of us?

A Portrait of Éire is a free exhibition open to everyone, running from Thurs 18th Sept – Sun 21st Sept.

Exhibition opening hours:

Thurs Opening Night: 6pm – 10pm
Fri Culture Night: 9am – 10pm
Sat: 9am – 1pm
Sun: 10am – 12pm & 4pm – 6pm

Zeda the Architect aka Oyindamola Animashaun is a Dublin-based curator, visual artist, and stylist working at the intersection of fashion, storytelling, and culture. Originally from Abeokuta, Nigeria, she has developed a multidisciplinary practice that bridges creativity, community, and sustainability.

Zeda is the founder of platforms such as THE ART OF STYLING and ZEDA AND
FRIENDS, both dedicated to celebrating Irishness, design, and collective experiences through fashion, storytelling, and new ways of gathering. Her work champions sustainable approaches to fashion and creativity, aligning with a broader commitment to reimagining how we engage with materials, culture, and each other.

Over her career, Zeda has worked on projects, shoots, fashion shows, and music videos for artists, charities, brands, and creative collectives. She was formerly Fashion Editor at VIP Publishing, producing covers, features, editorials, and shoots across Stellar, VIP, and TV NOW Magazine, and has been tapped for styling by several notable Irish celebrities and artists.

At the heart of her practice is a desire to create work that would have made her Black and Irish 13-year-old self feel seen and centering narratives that are inclusive, sustainable, and reflective of diverse lived experiences.

Collectively, SOD SCRAPER examines the shifting relationship between Ireland’s landscape, its histories, and the hidden architectures of the global data economy. The exhibition explores the intersections of personal narrative, contested land, industrial expansion, and the cultural re-framing of digital infrastructure. Together, the artworks form a layered portrait of a country where global capital reshapes ancient ground, where personal histories collide with corporate expansion, and where the monumental can be both a stone circle and a server farm. SOD SCRAPER asks, who owns the […]

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

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

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

Opening Reception takes place Thursday 18th September at 6pm

All welcome!

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

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

Thursday 18th September at 6pm
All Welcome!

Dublin City Council has officially announced the full programme for Culture Night Dublin 2025. The annual night time celebration of culture will take place on Friday, 19 September, with over 300 events in Dublin City.

Museums, galleries, cathedrals, artist studios, libraries, parks, historic landmarks, government buildings, theatres, music venues, community centres, and more will open their doors to the public as the city comes alive with exhilarating live acts, specially curated tours, hands-on workshops, pop-up performances, and many more bespoke one-night-only events.

This year’s outdoor programme features specially selected and commissioned acts and events designed to transform the city centre into a vibrant, open-air stage.

Meeting House Square will kick off with a Family Fun Set Dancing session with live music led by a sean nós dancer, fiddler, and expert set dancing instructor. Favour Odusola will be fusing Irish and Nigerian dance into a performance of rhythm, colour, and movement, while Lisa Murray (“Gaeilgeoir Swift”) delivers bilingual pop anthems that put the Irish language centre stage. Rounding out the evening, soul-pop star Calum Agne and cinematic post-rock band Earthmover will be bending genres to deliver an unforgettable night of ground-breaking tunes.

At Wood Quay Amphitheatre, Libyan-Irish artist Farah Elle presents lush arrangements of North African melodies, before The Comedy Cellar brings some of the country’s finest comedians to the stage for some razor-sharp stand-up. Central Plaza features Peru Fusion’s vibrant traditional dances and a hands-on workshop, followed by sparkling DJ sets and ultimate disco vibes. Over on Capel Street, Echo Exchange celebrates Ireland’s underground music scene with a genre-diverse lineup.

O’Connell Street will spring to life as actors embody Daniel O’Connell and Jim Larkin, while Meet Me Under the Clock recreates the city’s bandstand tradition with live music and dancing. At Diamond Park, enjoy magical screenings of Cartoon Saloon’s Oscar-nominated Song of the Sea and the nostalgic coming-of-age musical Sing Street, plus a riotous climate-action cabaret from the Green Grannies. Meanwhile, Shifting Stages offers raw theatre on motherhood, while The Poetry’s Dead Podcast goes live with craic, spoken word, and music at The Lab.

Speaking at the programme launch, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Councillor Ray McAdam, invited audiences to join the celebrations: “Join us on September 19th for the art party of the year as Culture Night celebrates its 20th year in the capital. Culture Night offers a chance for people to explore the city’s hidden gems, unleash your creativity and become a tourist in your own town. It’s wonderful to see that O’Connell Street will be activated with events for the first time, in the year of O’Connell’s 250th anniversary, a fitting tribute to our most famous former Lord Mayor”.

This year’s edition features over 250 venues across Dublin City, from Finglas to Clontarf to Ranelagh to Terenure to Inchicore, bringing every corner of the capital to life. Follow the link below to explore the full programme.

Jason McCarthy’s personal ode to Drogheda, his hometown, encompasses everyday urban spaces, housing, streets, forgotten corners,
dereliction, the post-industrial, and the edge lands where the urban gradually gives way to the rural and the ebb and flow of the
majestic river Boyne.

McCarthy’s striking portraits are of the people who inhabit these places. All are looking directly at the camera and hence at the
viewer, each person confident in their body language, presentation, and individuality.

Hometown speaks of rootedness, belonging, and connection. Of being shaped by a place and also being intrinsic to shaping it.
McCarthy’s photographs are imbued with insight, quietness, and stillness that give a particular perspective on his hometown and
encourage us to look more deeply at our own home places.

Rather than depicting nature, Borowa seeks to collaborate with it, exploring her relationship with the natural world. The process is central to her inquiry, seen as lessons in humility, openness, attentiveness, mindfulness, patience, determination, and forgiveness. Dorota works with water as an active collaborator in the creation of an image. Mixing it with oil paint, watercolour, or ink, she allows the materials to interact organically on paper or board. At times, she sets up physical conditions that allow water to shape the work – such as filling a pool, or building a raft and installing it along the shore. Different states of water – rain, ice, seawater, and recently glacier water – collected from various places form a unique vocabulary in her work.

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

Exhibition Launch:
6 – 8pm with special live performance at 6:30pm
Friday 19th September 2025

The landscape swallows our histories is a joint exhibition by artists Amanda Riceand Jo Pester showcasing a new collaborative 8mm analogue film, alongside their radio play Magical Body, which will be activated as a performance during Culture Night.

The film explores the geological, technological, human and more-than-human traces left behind at Knock Iveagh — a neolithic burial site in Northern Ireland. Comprising burial cairn and green energy solutions, multiple points of time collide within this ritual landscape: ancient pollen particles, cremated bone fragments, charcoal dating back to 3060 BC, local residents, green capitalism, techno hubris. A shared terrain, haunted by both the past and pressing possibilities of imagined futures.

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

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

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

Artist Talk 8 October 1pm

An exclusive retrospective exhibition celebrating the life’s work of one of Ireland’s most distinctive and provocative artists Graham Knuttel will take place in the Minerva Suite at The RDS, Dublin on 19th – 21st September 2025.

Knuttel died at the age of 69 in 2023. He was one of the best known contemporary Irish artists, found in public and private collections around the world. His work captured the contradictions of modern life through his vivid, stylised works. His bold use of colour and sharp, angular figures became synonymous with the boom years of the Celtic Tiger, portraying shady characters, gangsters, and sultry women in a way that exposed the undercurrents of greed and power beneath the surface.

Known internationally, Knuttel’s work attracted collectors such as Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro and Frank Sinatra, in addition to attracting numerous portrait commissions for renowned figures such as Christy Moore and John B. Keane, cementing his place as a unique observer of contemporary society.

The exhibition will showcase a lifetime of work from his illustrious career, including iconic paintings, sculptures crafted from bronze, silver and wood, the Knuttel Linley collaborative chess set and tapestries that earned him international recognition. This must-see event offers art enthusiasts a unique opportunity to witness the evolution of Knuttel’s artistic vision and immerse themselves with Knuttel’s unmistakable blend of vivid colour, storytelling, and intricate character studies. In addition, the show will feature two of his very last works – a sculpture and painting he had just completed before his unexpected death on a trip to Spain.

One of Knuttel’s most striking creations was the elaborate chess set that he made in collaboration with the renowned furniture designer and manufacturer David Linley, which will take centre piece of the Retrospective Exhibition.

Muine Bheag Arts is delighted to present Where the Field Fails to Hold, an exhibition by Cian Lawler.

Where the Field Fails to Hold is a series of photographic interventions which reflect on the rhythms of everyday life in a small town. The photographs document casual encounters with friends, familiar places and often overlooked details of Muine Bheag. Lawler began photographing his daily life in 2019 as a way to explore the emotional tether to his hometown.

The exhibition launches at Bagenalstown Community Garden at 6pm on 19th Sept as part of Culture Night and continues until 28th Sept.

A screening, conversation and Q&A event of visual artist Marie Brett’s YES, BUT DO YOU CARE? audio-visual art work is at Source Arts Centre in Thurles, Co Tipperary, on Friday 19 Sept at 2.30pm
Yes, But Do You Care? is in IMMA’s collection and the artwork explores the politics of autonomy, dementia care and capacity legislation; based on real-life family carer stories, and some which are hard to hear, combined with Ireland’s new Capacity Act legislation.

“An evocative artistic abstraction”.
FREE / All welcome

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

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

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

Join us to celebrate Culture Night on Friday 19th of September from 5–10pm with a range of free events for art and culture lovers!

5–10pm Gallery Late Opening: Deirdre Frost

5–6pm Children’s Drawing Workshop with Deirdre Frost

6.30–8pm Tetrapak Print Workshop for Adults and Teens with Anne McDonnell

8–10pm Cumbia and The Gang DJ set

No booking required and all events are free!

Evolving Landscapes is a critical reflection on the urgent need for climate action in the face of escalating ecological instability. As biodiversity declines and environmental thresholds are crossed, artistic practices increasingly turn to embodied, site-responsive methods that engage directly with damaged ecosystems and communities on the frontlines of change.

This exhibition, curated by Valeria Ceregini, brings together the work of Louis Haugh, Tadhg Kinsella, and Laura Skehan.
Evolving Landscapes is commissioned by Fingal County Council for Culture Night 2025.

Join us at the Grilse Gallery for a sparkling evening of conversation between eminent broadcaster and art critic Cristín Leach and the innovative visual artist Dorota Borowa, focussing on Dorota’s unique practice and introducing Dorota’s site-specific installation and exhibition ‘In Search of Presence’ which runs from 19 September – 12 October.

Dorota creates site-specific installations that both intervene in and harmonise with their surroundings, combining large-scale works on paper with charcoal drawings on the walls. Rather than simply depicting nature, Borowa collaborates with it. She ‘assists’ the movement of water in painting an image, be it rain, ice, seawater or glacier water, rather than exerting exclusive control over the image.

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Gallery open Wednesday – Sunday 12–5pm
Free entry, all welcome. Wheelchair accessible.

For Culture Night join us for a panel discussion with artist Kate Fahey, curator Rachel Botha, and local historian Ann Tierney to expand on the exhibition’s concept, research and process. ‘beyond, beneath, Beside’ is a solo exhibition by artist Kate Fahey, it explores the context of the Tea Houses and their proximity to the River Nore. The exhibition investigates the gallery site and locale, including Talbot’s Inch model arts and crafts village, the former Greenvale Woolen Mills, and engaged with Kilkenny’s rich subterranean, cultural and industrial history associated with the river.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Taking Shape” is the second group exhibition from the Sow’s Ear Collective, a gathering of multidisciplinary artists working across painting, sculpting, textile, and more.

Following the inaugural exhibition (“Holding Space”), “Taking Shape” invites audiences into a space of becoming – where ideas crystallise, edges emerge, and where the mess of process begins to resolve into something legible, tangible, or provocatively unresolved. Each piece in the exhibition carries the beauty of artists working in motion, and together the works speak of growth.

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

Location: The Gallery at The Complex, 21 Arran Street East, Dublin 7, D07YY97
Preview: 19 Sept, 6-8 pm
Exhibition Run: 20 Sept – 3 Oct
Hours: 10am-5pm Mon-Fri, 12-5pm Sat
Tickets: Free entry, no booking required

Residues of The Garden of Eden at The Complex brings together the work of Joanne Reid and Ben Weir, curated by Mark O’Gorman and Debi Paul. Mark and Debi have been working closely on the exhibition since they proposed the collaboration in 2022, whereupon the artists became bound through their instinctive conversations. As it progressed, the contrast in scale between the artist’s work, along with a shared sensitivity and a refined sculptural language, through the use of industrial materials such as steel, wood, and concrete, made the connection apparent.

A central point of dialogue that emerged between the artists in relation to The Complex site and its surrounding environment gravitated towards a focal point that was the Garden of Eden – not only the biblical paradise described in the Book of Genesis, but also the (later inspired) formal walled gardens of aristocratic estates. The Garden of Eden has acted as a central node from which other enquiries branched out, among them the Victorian Fruit and Vegetable Market, currently under renovation and adjacent to The Complex in Smithfield, with its richly ornate terracotta castings of lobsters, turnips, and other produce, sequenced uniformly across its exterior. It also embraced the materials and packaging methods used daily by the vendors with their cardboard boxes filled with vegetables, arranged on the roadside, stacked on pallets and wrapped in plastic, displaying an unintentional harmony of form, colour, and gesture.

As conversations between the artists and curators developed, the concept of the wall in relation to the garden became foundational, raising the notion of designed boundaries that interrogate tensions between inside and outside, wild and tamed, safety and danger, class structures, and the demarcation of land and communities. The artist’s research led them to another local site of discovery, St. Mary’s Abbey, founded in 1139 and once one of the largest and most significant medieval monasteries in Ireland. Ben came across a map illustrating the historic parish boundary of St. Mary’s and revealed that whilst the Abbey ceased to function as such after the dissolution of the monasteries in 1541, the area north of the Liffey continued to be served by St. Michan’s. It was not until 1698 that St. Mary’s parish was formally established, separating it from St. Michan’s, the boundary of which appears to cut diagonally through the exhibition space at The Complex, creating yet another layer of spatial and historical division which will inform Ben’s installation.

According to Joanne’s research, it was rumoured that an Abbot once covered the leaf mouldings on the ceiling of the Abbey’s Chapter House to prevent the monks working there from becoming distracted, or ultimately seduced by the beauty of nature. This detail resonates with discussions around walled gardens, the Garden of Eden, and the idea of temptation. Joanne references Albrecht Dürer’s Adam and Eve as a key image in her research, in which the biblical figures are shown with fig leaves covering their genitals, symbolising their poignant shame; and at the same time, the branch depicted possesses a certain delicacy. From the fig leaf to the reverent cauliflower leaf, and how it is trimmed for wholesale distribution, to the leaf patterns found on recently unearthed medieval tiles from St Mary’s Abbey, the leaf continues to be a unifying motif in Joanne’s work for the exhibition.

As the exhibition approaches, playful conversations and formative site visits have taken place at locations such as The Wonderful Barn, Fire Station Artists’ Studios, the Leixlip Spa, St. Mary’s Abbey, Chapter House and various construction/archaeological sites surrounding The Complex. Boundary walls were scaled or peeked over as they encouraged each other to discover. Residues from different periods of the Gallery site’s history proliferate through their conversations, calling to attention other sites of interest and moments in art history. These outings have informed a flourishing dialogue and a relationship between the artists and curators, laying lines between and marking out in increments their thoughts and speculations.

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

Post-show discussion with Cléa

On Saturday, September 20, 2025, starting at 2 PM, Atelierhaus Mengerzeile in Alt-Treptow will once again open its studios to the public, offering a glimpse into the artistic work happening inside. We warmly invite everyone to join us and look forward to exchanging ideas with friends, long-time companions, art enthusiasts, and both new and old neighbours.
Two Irish artists, Enda O’Donoghue and Michelle Lloyd, are long-term residents in the studio house.

Luan Gallery presents SYSTEM ARMING, a group exhibition featuring sculpture, film, installation, and painting works exploring the complex ways digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and transhumanism intersect with contemporary power structures.
Exhibiting artists: Nadia J. Armstrong, Kennedy Browne, Aisling Phelan, Colin Martin- Curated by Aoife Banks.
Official opening on Saturday, 20 September at 2pm with guest speaker Dr Francis Halsall.
All are welcome to attend.

Exhibition continues to Sunday 16 November.

Supported by The Arts Council

Paint the Day Away at Russborough House! Bring your easel, sketchbook or canvas (stamped on arrival) and enjoy a day of plein air painting among gardens, statuary, and mountain views. Learn from top Irish artists with demos and Q&As, enter competitions, and exhibit or sell your work in a pop-up show. Prizes include art materials, vouchers, and courses. Refreshments available from Gather & Gather café, or bring a picnic. Rain or shine, dress for the weather and bring your favourite materials!

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.

The Fresh to the Salt is a two-person exhibition by visual artists Angie Shanahan & Bridget Flannery (posthumously 1959 – 2024) which will be shown in the main gallery space. The exhibition consists of drawings and paintings responding to the artists’ engagement with coastal and riverine landscapes through drawing, sketch booking and mapping. History, placenames and local studies also feed into their preoccupation with the sense of place.

Angie Shanahan’s current practice involves landscape impacted by human presence usually set within a specific water defined place, the coast. She has had numerous solo exhibitions and has participated in numerous group shows nationwide.

During her lifetime, Bridget Flannery’s work was mainly focused on painting and drawing. She consistently exhibited in solo and group shows in Ireland and Europe. Her work is held in public and private collections nationally and internationally.

Please join us on the evening of Thursday 21 August 2025, 6-8pm, opening remarks by Anne Hodge, National Gallery of Ireland and Katriona Gillespie, manager of the Custom House Studios + Gallery.
This exhibition is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Mayo County Council.

False Kingdoms a solo exhibition presented by Kaye Maahs will be shown in the upstairs gallery space. Maahs’ practice is devoted to the pursuit of painting. With the aid of photography, she documents moments, places and environments. Images are utilised as navigation props for assistance when she paints.
Maahs’ has held numerous solo exhibitions and has participated in multiple group shows nationally. Award. She has won many awards including the Thomas Dammann Junior Memorial Trust Award and the Hunt Museums Curator’s Choice award.

Please join us on the evening of Thursday 21 August 2025, 6-8pm, opening remarks by Anne Hodge, National Gallery of Ireland and Katriona Gillespie, manager of the Custom House Studios + Gallery.
This exhibition is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Mayo County Council.

Signal Arts Centre is thrilled to present Moments of Joy, the debut solo exhibition of Wicklow-based painter Heather Flynn, running from September 1 to 14, 2025.
The exhibition will officially open with a reception on Friday, September 5, from 7–9pm, and all are warmly invited to join this special celebration of art, colour, and community.
Already well-known to the Signal Arts Centre family as Communications Officer, Heather has long championed the creativity of others. Now, stepping into the spotlight herself, she shares her own artistic voice in this much-anticipated first solo show.
Heather’s oil paintings are inspired by the wild beauty of Wicklow’s landscapes, where sea, sky, and earth merge in endless transformation. Her expressive brushwork, bold use of colour, and layered textures capture the fleeting rhythms of nature — from the hush of dawn to the glow of evening. Striking a vibrant balance between abstraction and landscape, her work invites viewers to lose themselves in colour, memory, and atmosphere.
Moments of Joy is more than a collection of paintings; it is an invitation to pause, to reflect, and to celebrate the radiance of everyday beauty. Heather’s art is filled with movement, emotion, and a sense of wonder — a vivid reminder of how nature and creativity connect us all.

Earth Rising Festival 2025

Join us for Earth Rising 2025, a vibrant free festival of art, ecology, and ideas. Running from 12 to 14 September, this year’s festival is inspired by Staying with the Trouble, IMMA’s major group exhibition based on Donna Haraway’s influential text. From radical talks to joyful workshops, restorative installations to grassroots action, Earth Rising 2025 features over 50 free events designed to inspire, connect, and activate. Explore the programme – Art, Talks, Music, Screenings, Workshops and Tours & Activities – in the below panels.

IMMA is also thrilled to share that it has officially signed up to Culture Declares Emergency, becoming the first major cultural institution in Ireland to do so. This global movement calls on the cultural sector to respond to the climate and ecological crisis.

The festival opening hours are Fri 12 Sept from 5pm to 9pm; Sat 13 and Sun 14 Sept from 10am to 7pm. Full programme details and booking links are available at the link below. Some events require advance booking. All events are free admission.

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok for updates. We look forward to welcoming you to Earth Rising, bring your curiosity!

Art Historian Dr Matthew Whyte offers a new lecture series, which takes the audience on an art-filled journey through the often beautiful, sometimes scandalous, and always fascinating moments in the development of Western civilisation.

Week 1: The Pre-Raphaelites & The Birth of Modernism
In this first week, we explore the artists who looked back in order to move forward in the first breaths of modernism. Famously referred to as the Pre-Raphaelites, a name which these artists coined for themselves, the group looked back to the art of the Middle Ages as an act of resistance again the Royal Academy, whose control over artistic production and education was increasingly being perceived to be unjust. Pre-Raphaelite art draws inspiration from literature and nature, focusing on creating emotionally and spiritually evocative work. In this lecture, we examine the innovation of artists such as John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, and William Holman Hunt, also exploring the impact their thinking had in the 19th-century Arts & Craft Movement and the Gothic Revival. Meanwhile, in France, another group of artists looked to the here and now to drive change through their art. The Realists sought an innovative solution that would shed light on the social inequalities that defined modern life by doing something never done before: depicting working class life as it really was. In this way, Gustave Courbet, Jean François Millet, and others became artist-activists driving change through painting ordinary working people for the first time in the history of art.

1. Tues 16 September
The Pre-Raphaelites & The Birth of Modernism

2. Tues 23 September
Impressionism & Modern Life

3. Tues 30 September
Post-Impressionism

4. Tues 7 October
The Artist’s Inner World – Expressionism & Surrealism

5. Tues 14 October
The New Industrial Era – Futurism to Pop Art

6. Tues 21 October
The World Transformed – Cubism to Abstract Art

Opening reception Thursday 11th September. 6pm. Exhibition Fri 12th – Weds 17th September. 12 – 5.30pm. Closed Sunday/Monday. Dublin based artist, Glenn Matthews showcases a selection of his Pop Art portraits at a solo exhibition at Red’s Gallery Dublin in September.

For more information please contact marginman1@gmail.com

Join artist Deirdre Frost and curator Katie O’Grady on 17th September 1–2pm at GOMA Gallery Waterford for a lunchtime Q&A about Deirdre’s practice and her most recent body of work, 𝘉𝘭𝘶𝘦 𝘚𝘬𝘪𝘦𝘴, 𝘉𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘌𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘩: a solo exhibition running until 27 September 2025 at GOMA Waterford.

𝗪𝗲𝗱𝗻𝗲𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝟭𝟳𝘁𝗵 𝗦𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 | 𝟭-𝟮𝗽𝗺 | 𝗚𝗢𝗠𝗔 𝗚𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘆, 𝟲/𝟳 𝗟𝗼𝗺𝗯𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗲𝘁, 𝗪𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗱

All welcome! Free event, 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.

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.

Craig Jefferson is a Scottish born artist now living in Bangor, Northern Ireland with his wife and three children. He began his creative career at Leith School of Art, Edinburgh, in 2002 and continued his studies at Edinburgh College of Art where he graduated with an Honours degree in Drawing and Painting.

Craig is currently represented by the Stafford Gallery in London and the Contemporary Six Gallery in Manchester. As a member of the New English Art Club, he exhibits annually at the Mall Galleries and with associated galleries across the UK. He has taken part in several Academy group shows in the UK and Ireland and had work included in prestigious prize exhibitions such as the Columbia Threadneedle Prize and the Lynn-Painter Stainers Prize. His work features in private collections in Europe and the United States.

Craig was one of our first Studio Members at Seacourt, where he has a space overlooking Central Avenue on the second floor. Since being here he has immersed himself in printmaking focusing on screen printing, mono print and tetra pak collographs.

This exhibition will be the first time Craig has shown prints alongside his paintings. The cross pollination of these processes has brought a freshness to the artist’s approach and application as he comments,

“Engagement in printmaking has had a huge effect on how I paint. It’s a whole new way of thinking. A new realm of ideas and possibilities has been opened to me.”

Come and see Craig’s work in person on the opening night of this show – Thursday 31st July 6-9pm. Exhibition continues until the 19th September.

Opening – Saturday 30 August 2025
With a music performance by the artist at 2.45pm

Open – Tuesday-Saturday, 11am-5pm

‘Singing Threads: Songs and Stories of Ulster’s Mill Life’ features textile artist and musician Eimear Magee. It presents a new iteration of her graduate collection, an innovative body of work that combines contemporary textile art, traditional music and storytelling to honour the resilience of mill workers, transforming their lived experiences into rich, emotive art. Through this work, the artist creates a “living archive” that not only revisits and revives tradition, but invites reflection on community strength and cultural continuity.

About the artist
Eimear Magee is an emerging textile artist and traditional musician whose practice is a fusion of tradition and innovation, drawing inspiration from the rich tapestry of Irish traditional music, storytelling, and community engagement. A recent graduate of Ulster University’s Textile Art, Design, and Fashion programme, her work draws on the stories, songs, and rhythms of Ulster’s linen industry.

Exhibition supported by
‘Singing Threads’ is supported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (principal funder). The exhibition is part of the Linen Biennale, a festival celebrating linen, past, present and future, with initiatives across Northern Ireland by R-Space and other partner organisations. The Esmé Mitchell Trust supported R-Space’s work for this festival. https://www.linenbiennalenorthernireland.com

Join us at the Grilse Gallery for a sparkling evening of conversation between eminent broadcaster and art critic Cristín Leach and the innovative visual artist Dorota Borowa, focussing on Dorota’s unique practice and introducing Dorota’s site-specific installation and exhibition ‘In Search of Presence’ which runs from 19 September – 12 October.

Dorota creates site-specific installations that both intervene in and harmonise with their surroundings, combining large-scale works on paper with charcoal drawings on the walls. Rather than simply depicting nature, Borowa collaborates with it. She ‘assists’ the movement of water in painting an image, be it rain, ice, seawater or glacier water, rather than exerting exclusive control over the image.

087 604 7559
www.grilse.ie
Instagram/grilsegallery

Gallery open Wednesday – Sunday 12–5pm
Free entry, all welcome. Wheelchair accessible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exhibition continues from the 14th of August to the 19th of September 2025

Featuring three 5.4m towers from discarded wardrobes—antique mahogany to mid-20th-century chipboard. Once bedroom sentinels, they mirror human scale amid capitalist decay & ecological loss. Charred, their graphite sheen reveals pre-industrial carbon, a silvery breath from past forests, hinting at immortality. From cave charcoal to quantum tech, this graphite, a communication tool, sparks hope via cross-disciplinary dialogue against the ecological abyss. With eco-gothic tones—from toppled dolmens to Space Odyssey monoliths—they evoke a haunting legacy of neglect through architectural resonance.

Join us to celebrate Culture Night on Friday 19th of September from 5–10pm with a range of free events for art and culture lovers!

5–10pm Gallery Late Opening: Deirdre Frost

5–6pm Children’s Drawing Workshop with Deirdre Frost

6.30–8pm Tetrapak Print Workshop for Adults and Teens with Anne McDonnell

8–10pm Cumbia and The Gang DJ set

No booking required and all events are free!

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

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

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

“Taking Shape” is the second group exhibition from the Sow’s Ear Collective, a gathering of multidisciplinary artists working across painting, sculpting, textile, and more.

Following the inaugural exhibition (“Holding Space”), “Taking Shape” invites audiences into a space of becoming – where ideas crystallise, edges emerge, and where the mess of process begins to resolve into something legible, tangible, or provocatively unresolved. Each piece in the exhibition carries the beauty of artists working in motion, and together the works speak of growth.

For Culture Night join us for a panel discussion with artist Kate Fahey, curator Rachel Botha, and local historian Ann Tierney to expand on the exhibition’s concept, research and process. ‘beyond, beneath, Beside’ is a solo exhibition by artist Kate Fahey, it explores the context of the Tea Houses and their proximity to the River Nore. The exhibition investigates the gallery site and locale, including Talbot’s Inch model arts and crafts village, the former Greenvale Woolen Mills, and engaged with Kilkenny’s rich subterranean, cultural and industrial history associated with the river.

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

Dublin City Council has officially announced the full programme for Culture Night Dublin 2025. The annual night time celebration of culture will take place on Friday, 19 September, with over 300 events in Dublin City.

Museums, galleries, cathedrals, artist studios, libraries, parks, historic landmarks, government buildings, theatres, music venues, community centres, and more will open their doors to the public as the city comes alive with exhilarating live acts, specially curated tours, hands-on workshops, pop-up performances, and many more bespoke one-night-only events.

This year’s outdoor programme features specially selected and commissioned acts and events designed to transform the city centre into a vibrant, open-air stage.

Meeting House Square will kick off with a Family Fun Set Dancing session with live music led by a sean nós dancer, fiddler, and expert set dancing instructor. Favour Odusola will be fusing Irish and Nigerian dance into a performance of rhythm, colour, and movement, while Lisa Murray (“Gaeilgeoir Swift”) delivers bilingual pop anthems that put the Irish language centre stage. Rounding out the evening, soul-pop star Calum Agne and cinematic post-rock band Earthmover will be bending genres to deliver an unforgettable night of ground-breaking tunes.

At Wood Quay Amphitheatre, Libyan-Irish artist Farah Elle presents lush arrangements of North African melodies, before The Comedy Cellar brings some of the country’s finest comedians to the stage for some razor-sharp stand-up. Central Plaza features Peru Fusion’s vibrant traditional dances and a hands-on workshop, followed by sparkling DJ sets and ultimate disco vibes. Over on Capel Street, Echo Exchange celebrates Ireland’s underground music scene with a genre-diverse lineup.

O’Connell Street will spring to life as actors embody Daniel O’Connell and Jim Larkin, while Meet Me Under the Clock recreates the city’s bandstand tradition with live music and dancing. At Diamond Park, enjoy magical screenings of Cartoon Saloon’s Oscar-nominated Song of the Sea and the nostalgic coming-of-age musical Sing Street, plus a riotous climate-action cabaret from the Green Grannies. Meanwhile, Shifting Stages offers raw theatre on motherhood, while The Poetry’s Dead Podcast goes live with craic, spoken word, and music at The Lab.

Speaking at the programme launch, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Councillor Ray McAdam, invited audiences to join the celebrations: “Join us on September 19th for the art party of the year as Culture Night celebrates its 20th year in the capital. Culture Night offers a chance for people to explore the city’s hidden gems, unleash your creativity and become a tourist in your own town. It’s wonderful to see that O’Connell Street will be activated with events for the first time, in the year of O’Connell’s 250th anniversary, a fitting tribute to our most famous former Lord Mayor”.

This year’s edition features over 250 venues across Dublin City, from Finglas to Clontarf to Ranelagh to Terenure to Inchicore, bringing every corner of the capital to life. Follow the link below to explore the full programme.

A screening, conversation and Q&A event of visual artist Marie Brett’s YES, BUT DO YOU CARE? audio-visual art work is at Source Arts Centre in Thurles, Co Tipperary, on Friday 19 Sept at 2.30pm
Yes, But Do You Care? is in IMMA’s collection and the artwork explores the politics of autonomy, dementia care and capacity legislation; based on real-life family carer stories, and some which are hard to hear, combined with Ireland’s new Capacity Act legislation.

“An evocative artistic abstraction”.
FREE / All welcome

An exhibition from Crawford Art Gallery Collection selected by Salt & Pepper LGBTQI+ Art Collective with Toma McCullim

Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre – alongside the Salt & Pepper group (West Cork’s elder LGBTQI+ arts collective) – has partnered with artist Toma McCullim to curate an invigorating exhibition for summer 2025. Titled Grá, this exhibition celebrates love in all its forms and draws from the collection of Crawford Art Gallery. Accompanying this curated selection are responses to individual artworks in the exhibition made by artists from the Salt & Pepper Collective.

While this National Cultural Institution is closed for its major redevelopment – Transforming Crawford Art Gallery – the opportunity arose to share parts of its collection with other organisations across the island of Ireland to create meaningful encounters for the public. With the guidance of Dr. Michael Waldron Curator of Collections and Special Projects at Crawford Art Gallery, Salt & Pepper has explored the collection to shape a diverse, inclusive showcase for Uillinn, accompanied by a rich programme of talks, tours, workshops, and events.

Grá features key works from the 20th and 21st centuries, including the iconic Portrait of Fiona Shaw (2002) by Victoria Russell, The Red Rose (1923) by John Lavery, and Patrick Hennessy’s Self Portrait and Cat (1978), as well as Paul La Rocque’s In Her Own Garden (1998) and the photographic series Hi, Vis (2020-21) by Dragana Jurišić. The exhibition also includes works by, among others, Sara Baume, Margaret Clarke, Tom Climent, Gerard Dillon, Stephen Doyle, Mainie Jellett, Harry Kernoff, Janet Mullarney, Isabel Nolan, John Rainey, Patrick Scott, Edith Somerville, Niamh Swanton, and Mary Swanzy.

A highlight of the exhibition is the formation of the Grá Choir led by singer-songwriter Liz Clark in collaboration with Salt & Pepper. The choir will perform Beloved, a choral piece and a moving tribute to enduring love, composed by Carol Nelson for her wife Deborah, at the opening of the Grá exhibition. A further performance will take place in St. Barrahane’s Church, Castletownshend later in the summer.

Developed through a series of workshops by West Cork Rainbow Families in collaboration with Toma McCullim, the Grá Discovery Box will be available throughout the exhibition. It invites families to explore the exhibition together, encouraging interaction with the artwork and offering insights into the artists’ creative processes. It’s free to use, and no booking is required.

Developed and facilitated by artist Toma McCullim and health professional Sarah Cairns, In the Picture, le Grá is a dementia-friendly gallery programme thoughtfully designed for small groups. Participants are given time to explore the space and artwork at their own pace, with light refreshments included to support a relaxed and welcoming atmosphere.

Film screenings include a short film programme curated by Kai Fiáin reflecting the exhibition’s themes of intimacy, resistance and renewal on Saturday 23 August at 7.00pm; Aideen Barry’s Not to be Known (single channel film, 5.5 mins, Crawford Collection) on Friday 1 August from 10.00am to 4.30pm and Clare Langan’s The Heart of a Tree (HD digital film, 12 mins, Crawford Collection) on Saturday 23 August, 10.00am to 3.30pm.

Grá Gallery Talk and Tours with Dr. Michael Waldron will take place on Thursday 24 July at 1.00pm and Thursday 18 September at 1.00pm, free event, no booking necessary.

For further information on these and other events please see our web and social media channels.

Image: Paul La Rocque, In Her Own Garden. Collection Crawford Art Gallery, Cork. © the artist

For the first time in over thirty years, the powerful and deeply personal work of Dutch photographer Frits de Ridder (1954–1994) will be showcased in an exhibition, opening on August 7, 2025, at Belfast Exposed. Frits de Ridder: Staring at the Sun presents an unflinching portrait of life, illness, and resistance during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This landmark exhibition, realised with the full support of de Ridder’s family and unprecedented access to his archive, marks the first public presentation of his photographic estate since his passing. Curated by José Neves, the exhibition draws from the extensive collection of De Ridder’s work held by the International Institute of Social History (IISH/IISG) in Amsterdam. De Ridder’s work provides a powerful visual documentation of his experience living with HIV/AIDS, while also reflecting the broader struggle for dignity, visibility, and justice that characterised the experiences of those affected by the virus in the late 1980s and early 1990s. His photographs depict a period marked by stigma and fear, but also by resilience and political awakening. By opening his previously unseen archive to the public, the exhibition seeks to encourage reflection, activism, and collective remembrance. Moreover, it places de Ridder’s legacy in a current context, as the aim of eliminating new HIV transmissions by 2030 remains achievable but increasingly at risk.

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.

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

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

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

Artist Talk
Sat. 5 Jul. 3pm

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

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

For the first time in over thirty years, the powerful and deeply personal work of Dutch photographer Frits de Ridder (1954–1994) will be showcased in an exhibition, opening on August 7, 2025, at Belfast Exposed. Frits de Ridder: Staring at the Sun presents an unflinching portrait of life, illness, and resistance during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

This landmark exhibition, realised with the full support of de Ridder’s family and unprecedented access to his archive, marks the first public presentation of his photographic estate since his passing. Curated by José Neves, the exhibition draws from the extensive collection of De Ridder’s work held by the International Institute of Social History (IISH/IISG) in Amsterdam.

De Ridder’s work provides a powerful visual documentation of his experience living with HIV/AIDS, while also reflecting the broader struggle for dignity, visibility, and justice that characterised the experiences of those affected by the virus in the late 1980s and early 1990s. His photographs depict a period marked by stigma and fear, but also by resilience and political awakening. By opening his previously unseen archive to the public, the exhibition seeks to encourage reflection, activism, and collective remembrance. Moreover, it places de Ridder’s legacy in a current context, as the aim of eliminating new HIV transmissions by 2030 remains achievable but increasingly at risk.

Exhibition continues 15th August – 20th September 2025. 
Mary Cullen-Kelly presents Carousel.
15th August – 20th September at Dunamaise Arts Centre.
Free to visit during opening hours, and 1 hour prior events (Tues to Sat, 1pm to 5pm).

Mary Cullen Kelly likes to time travel using paint, print and collage. Her colourful and detailed images can feel all at once familiar and strange. She creates moments and places that may or may not have existed. She is interested in and has studied the experience of Flow Theory in relation to art making.

Mary was awarded this solo exhibition as a prize from our Open Submission Show 2024 by Guest Selector Vera Klute, RHA.

About the Artist
Mary is an artist from Dublin who lives in Carlow. She has a degree in Fine Art Print from NCAD and an MSc in Disability Studies from UCD, which focussed on the experience of engagement in arts activities, for which she won the Eunice Kennedy Shriver medal. She has previously exhibited in VISUAL Carlow and extensively in group and open submission shows, including the RHA Annual. Mary has been involved in community arts in Dublin and Carlow. See more on www.marycullenkelly.com

The exhibition title references the TV series MadMen; there the ‘carousel’ is a Kodak slide projector that ‘moves the viewer forwards and backwards’ in time.
This series of paintings, prints and objects seek to describe a world that can feel familiar and strange all at the same time. Things are always changing. The artist draws on science fiction movies from the 50s and 60s. Colourful paintings of domestic and ‘small town’ settings draw us in with a whiff of nostalgia, a sense of the familiar which is subverted as things are not quite as expected. Photopolymer prints and made objects offer clues that the world we are in has been altered. Flora and other items have appeared nearby. Questions are posed but not answered. The world has changed and we are not quite sure where we are.

Clare Arts Office in conjunction with Clare Museum is delighted to present “The return of wonder” by Marijke Jordens and Simon Ratcliffe.

Marijke Jordens is a Belgian artist and singer living in Ennis. She studied life drawing in the Fine Art Academy in Ghent and studied Archaeology at the University.
Marijke’s work reflects a balance between being and doing, between the intuitive and the craft. In The return of wonder Marijke shows her message from within about the dawn of a new way of being, rooted in the celebration of joy and wonder.

Exhibitions:
“Trio: Flow, Texture, Light” with Ronan McMahon and Ingrid Lotter, Sweeney Memorial Library, Kilkee – September 2023;
“Let the light come in”, Steele’s Terrace – December 2022, Scarriff Library – June 2024;
Portrait Exhibition, Mountshannon – December 2024;
Barna Art Fair – December 2024;
“Holding it together” – Solo exhibition, Sweeney Memorial Library, Kilkee – February 2025

Simon Ratcliffe has continued to practice painting and drawing since attending art school in 1993, while working full-time in education. He moved to County Clare 20 years ago, and from that moment, the Burren has been his constant artistic companion, providing a rich source of inspiration. These abstract and figurative pen and ink drawings were created in response to the surrealism of the landscape – the weathered stone itself becomes an allegory of time and spirituality.

Walking the limestone and noticing the music of nature has been the pleasure of his life. Perhaps it is only there where his soul feels free to meditate on the mysteries of lie and to experience the unity of physical and ethereal perception. It is on the ancient seabed of Burren that the past and the present embrace.

Image attached: The return of wonder featuring:
She hears us by Marijke Jordens
The land within by Simon Ratcliffe

Exhibition continues from the 15th of August to the 20th of September 2025

The exhibition title references the TV series Mad Men; there the ‘carousel’ is a Kodak slide projector that in a sense moves the viewer forwards and backwards in time.

This series of paintings, prints and objects seek to describe a world that can feel familiar and strange all at the same time. Things are always changing. The artist draws on science fiction movies from the 50s and 60s. Colourful paintings of domestic and ‘small town’ settings draw us in with a whiff of nostalgia, a sense of the familiar which is subverted as things are not quite as expected. Photopolymer prints and made objects offer clues that the world we are in has been altered. Flora and other items have appeared nearby. Questions are posed but not answered. The world has changed and we are not quite sure where we are.

Luan Gallery presents SYSTEM ARMING, a group exhibition featuring sculpture, film, installation, and painting works exploring the complex ways digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and transhumanism intersect with contemporary power structures.
Exhibiting artists: Nadia J. Armstrong, Kennedy Browne, Aisling Phelan, Colin Martin- Curated by Aoife Banks.
Official opening on Saturday, 20 September at 2pm with guest speaker Dr Francis Halsall.
All are welcome to attend.

Exhibition continues to Sunday 16 November.

Supported by The Arts Council

On Saturday, September 20, 2025, starting at 2 PM, Atelierhaus Mengerzeile in Alt-Treptow will once again open its studios to the public, offering a glimpse into the artistic work happening inside. We warmly invite everyone to join us and look forward to exchanging ideas with friends, long-time companions, art enthusiasts, and both new and old neighbours.
Two Irish artists, Enda O’Donoghue and Michelle Lloyd, are long-term residents in the studio house.

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

Post-show discussion with Cléa

Exhibition continues from the 12th of July to the 20th of September 2025

Curated by Eamonn Maxwell, Another Time Undone considers the impact of family, land, and legacy on artistic practice. Vivienne Dick, Adrian O’Carroll and Jill Quigley were all born in Donegal, but this show is not about Donegal – well not directly.

The exhibition features new and existing work that explores the residue of life in the places the artists were born and since, through practices that eschew the touristy imagery of this part of Ireland. These artists may be considered lens-based, but this is not a photography exhibition. It is a journey through image making from different perspectives and using individual outputs that are playful and poignant. Each record time in a unique way.

Vivienne Dick makes single and multi-screen works which combine elements of documentary, performance, and fiction. A Skinny Little Man Attacked Daddy was filmed on a Betacam camera in Donegal in 1994, documenting the daily lives of her siblings and wider family circle. This is the first time this work has been exhibited in the county. The photographs in the exhibition were made in recent months using a medium format camera as part of her ongoing research into the landscape of Northwest Ireland.

For Another Time Undone, Adrian O’Carroll has made a new body of work that develops his ongoing investigations into a world that is quiet, dark, isolated and fragile. He is looking at our relationship with nature and ourselves through photographs that depict urban and rural landscapes, as well as subjects close to him yet unidentifiable to the viewer. Maghera, his largest work to date, shows the view from within the cave as we gaze towards an empty beach and the Atlantic Ocean beyond.

Playful subversion lies at the heart of Jill Quigley’s practice, exploring the consequences of making simple creative gestures in architectural space. Working with installation and photography she aims to form an awkward relationship with the practical aspects of a site. In this exhibition she has created a new work Frames, frames, frames (wreck tangle) that references an abandoned rural cottage on the Inishowen Peninsula through photographic and sculptural elements, as well as a section of wall reclaimed from the hallway of the property.

The exhibition is accompanied by a commissioned essay by Clare Gallagher.

The Regional Cultural Centre’s exhibition programme is supported by Donegal County Council and The Arts Council of Ireland.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For more information please visit www.theairweshare.ie

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.

In December 2017, artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen (b. 1969, London, UK) made an artwork in response to the fire that took place earlier that year on 14 June at Grenfell Tower, North Kensington, West London. 72 people died in the tragedy. Filming the tower before it was covered with hoarding, McQueen sought to make a record.

Following the fire, a Government Inquiry ran from September 2017 until September 2024. The resulting recommendations are yet to be implemented, meaning a similar tragedy could happen again. There is an ongoing criminal investigation, with potential charges including corporate manslaughter. No trials are expected until 2027 at the earliest, over a decade since the fire.

Grenfell was first presented in 2023 at Serpentine in London’s Kensington Gardens, following a period of private viewings, prioritising bereaved families and survivors. Following its presentation at Serpentine the work was placed in the care of Tate and the London Museum’s collections.

Please note screenings of Grenfell will take place at set times. Doors open fifteen minutes before the screening time and the screening will commence promptly. This work is intended to be seen from the start, so unfortunately latecomers cannot be admitted. The film is 24 minutes long.

The film contains close-up imagery of the tower six months after the fire. Please let a member of our team know if you need space to pause, rest and reflect afterwards.

Filming or photography is not permitted in the gallery space. Please ensure your phone is on silent.

This national tour is being coordinated by Tate in collaboration with the partner venues and is made possible thanks to public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England and from Art Fund.

An exclusive retrospective exhibition celebrating the life’s work of one of Ireland’s most distinctive and provocative artists Graham Knuttel will take place in the Minerva Suite at The RDS, Dublin on 19th – 21st September 2025.

Knuttel died at the age of 69 in 2023. He was one of the best known contemporary Irish artists, found in public and private collections around the world. His work captured the contradictions of modern life through his vivid, stylised works. His bold use of colour and sharp, angular figures became synonymous with the boom years of the Celtic Tiger, portraying shady characters, gangsters, and sultry women in a way that exposed the undercurrents of greed and power beneath the surface.

Known internationally, Knuttel’s work attracted collectors such as Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro and Frank Sinatra, in addition to attracting numerous portrait commissions for renowned figures such as Christy Moore and John B. Keane, cementing his place as a unique observer of contemporary society.

The exhibition will showcase a lifetime of work from his illustrious career, including iconic paintings, sculptures crafted from bronze, silver and wood, the Knuttel Linley collaborative chess set and tapestries that earned him international recognition. This must-see event offers art enthusiasts a unique opportunity to witness the evolution of Knuttel’s artistic vision and immerse themselves with Knuttel’s unmistakable blend of vivid colour, storytelling, and intricate character studies. In addition, the show will feature two of his very last works – a sculpture and painting he had just completed before his unexpected death on a trip to Spain.

One of Knuttel’s most striking creations was the elaborate chess set that he made in collaboration with the renowned furniture designer and manufacturer David Linley, which will take centre piece of the Retrospective Exhibition.

Deirdre Brennan’s image of Sinead O’Connor’s funeral courage was selected for “The Canticle of the Creatures” The International Photography Exhibition in Assisi.
Trieste Photo Days and Exhibit Around APS present in Assisi the international photography exhibition The Canticle of the Creatures, created on the occasion of the eighth centenary of Saint Francis’s hymn.Over 100 works will be on display, selected from more than 6,000 submissions from around the world. The photographers have interpreted the nine themes of Saint Francis’s celebrated hymn.

A Cage Called Family
A Solo Exhibition by Andrej Getman
Curated by Dino Notaro

A raw and unflinching look at growing up queer in a home that doesn’t always accept you. These paintings reveal the tension between family ties and selfhood, how love can feel conditional, how the place meant to protect can become a cage. Each work tells a story of confinement stretching from childhood into adulthood, speaking to hidden wounds, quiet acts of courage, and the strength it takes to live openly.

Official Opening: Thu 11 Sept, 6 – 8 pm

Dates: 11 – 21 September
Opening Hours: Tue – Sun, 10:30 – 5:30

Paint the Day Away at Russborough House! Bring your easel, sketchbook or canvas (stamped on arrival) and enjoy a day of plein air painting among gardens, statuary, and mountain views. Learn from top Irish artists with demos and Q&As, enter competitions, and exhibit or sell your work in a pop-up show. Prizes include art materials, vouchers, and courses. Refreshments available from Gather & Gather café, or bring a picnic. Rain or shine, dress for the weather and bring your favourite materials!

Curated by Zeda the Architect, this exhibition explores memory, identity, and belonging through a contemporary portrait of Ireland.

Featuring artists from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, it brings together painting, photography, storytelling, sound, and object-based installation.

Each contribution offers a fragment of lived experience, revealing an Éire that is intimate, layered, and evolving. Moving through personal memory and cultural symbolism, the works reframe Ireland not as a fixed identity, but as a shared, shifting narrative shaped by migration, joy, loss, community, and imagination.

It offers a space to remember, to reclaim, and to reimagine. Visitors are invited to engage with the past, the present, and what’s still becoming. This is both a love letter and a challenge. What does Ireland look like when seen by all of us?

A Portrait of Éire is a free exhibition open to everyone, running from Thurs 18th Sept – Sun 21st Sept.

Exhibition opening hours:

Thurs Opening Night: 6pm – 10pm
Fri Culture Night: 9am – 10pm
Sat: 9am – 1pm
Sun: 10am – 12pm & 4pm – 6pm

Zeda the Architect aka Oyindamola Animashaun is a Dublin-based curator, visual artist, and stylist working at the intersection of fashion, storytelling, and culture. Originally from Abeokuta, Nigeria, she has developed a multidisciplinary practice that bridges creativity, community, and sustainability.

Zeda is the founder of platforms such as THE ART OF STYLING and ZEDA AND
FRIENDS, both dedicated to celebrating Irishness, design, and collective experiences through fashion, storytelling, and new ways of gathering. Her work champions sustainable approaches to fashion and creativity, aligning with a broader commitment to reimagining how we engage with materials, culture, and each other.

Over her career, Zeda has worked on projects, shoots, fashion shows, and music videos for artists, charities, brands, and creative collectives. She was formerly Fashion Editor at VIP Publishing, producing covers, features, editorials, and shoots across Stellar, VIP, and TV NOW Magazine, and has been tapped for styling by several notable Irish celebrities and artists.

At the heart of her practice is a desire to create work that would have made her Black and Irish 13-year-old self feel seen and centering narratives that are inclusive, sustainable, and reflective of diverse lived experiences.

Festival continues from the 6th of September to the 21st of September 2025

Dublin Fringe Festival is a curated, multidisciplinary arts festival and a year-round artist support organisation. We create a framework for artistic risk, offering opportunities for artists to challenge and invigorate their practice, and extend the possibilities of what art can be. We seek out and present contemporary, playful and provocative new work made by Irish and international artists of vision in an annual celebration all over the city.

From form-busting theatre productions, electric dance performance, immersive installations to epic party nights out, every event is curated to ignite your mind and leave an indelible mark on your soul.

Dublin Fringe Festival 2025 takes place from Saturday 6 – Sunday 21 September 2025. 

At the End of the Day: New Paintings

Some memories resonate over and over and become part of our identity. Often they are just below the surface, on the border of dream and real life. Carol Hodder’s new work continues to mine this in-between state that sometimes leads to change and transformation.

Hodder is haunted by water. Early memories of being in a small boat on the lake with her father anchor her exploration of water, shoreline and edges. Her paintings often contain a sense of ambiguous internal weather, where ideas and experiences brood behind the surface of human experience.

Kim, Peter and Mary McCausland present recent paintings and drawings inspired by nature around home. Based in Larne on the North East coast of Northern Ireland, the family are interested in documenting home from personal photographs and observation. Through drawing and painting they portray three different gazes of things in common, including, people, place, pets, inanimate objects, flora and fauna.

Kim and Peter are married visual artists and arts educators. Both are alumni of Ulster University, Belfast School of Art. Their work, respectively, belongs in national public, and private collections. They have exhibited throughout Ireland and the UK. Mary is their child. This is her second group exhibition.

The exhibition will be on display from Thursday 4th until Friday 26th September 2025 and includes Saturday opening on 13th September. Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 10.00am – 4.00pm.

This summer marks a transformative moment for Kilmacthomas as the historic Old Woollen Mill reopens its doors, with the first floor of the mill reimagined as the 8 Arch Gallery—a new cultural space in the heart of the town. To celebrate this reopening, the gallery proudly presents its inaugural exhibition, featuring work by seven of Ireland’s most significant living artists.
Charles Tyrell
Bernadette Kiely
Gerda Teljeur
Paul Mosse
Eilis O’Connell
Eamon Colman
Pat Harris
This landmark show brings together an exciting collection of drawings, paintings and sculptures. Each artist has been carefully selected for their contribution to the visual arts, and the unique voice they bring to Ireland’s evolving cultural narrative.

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

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

Closing Launch on Wednesday 24th September 7pm.
This is a new body of work that merges abstract ink landscapes with darkroom experimentation. Moving Mountains includes chemigrams, chemograms, and salt etching pieces, created using resists and natural plant-based chemistry. These works engage with the local Irish landscape in a poetic, intuitive, and materially sensitive way. Through her practice, Greta offers a counter-narrative to the pace and noise of contemporary life inviting viewers to embrace the unknown, slow down, reconnect with the natural world, and find presence in the in-between.
No Booking Required

Blue Skies, Black Earth: A solo exhibition by Deirdre Frost at GOMA Gallery of Modern Art Waterford | Running from 30 August – 27 September 2025

Official launch: Saturday 30 August 4–6pm at GOMA Waterford. All are welcome!

The Earth, locus of growth and renewal, is the inspiration behind this new body of oil paintings on canvas and on wood by Deirdre Frost.

The works consider rootedness and displacement, alongside the innate instinct in all living things to grow, to thrive, to flourish, to reach upward. The paintings attempt to capture the experience of living in this world – a fragmented, complicated place of growth and collapse, influenced by a multitude of opaque and complex human agendas. Buildings, split open under construction or under dereliction, reverberate of our time of great need for safe homes globally. A space to thrive; a world where the plants and soil itself is under pressure due to excess human activity.

Vignettes depict scenes of captured beauty and simplicity, much like an endeavour to simplify and structure our lives and desires, while the box like structures that contain these snapshots split and crack. Oil painting on canvas rooted on the floor draws the viewer in to its dark vortex as prickly plants reach from the depths, a visceral reminder of what is beneath our feet. Sea thrift drifting through a triptych give a sense a floating free, uprooted, adrift and floating like seeds through the air while soft bog cotton blows above collapsed slabs on a shore.

In line with works such as Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital, which presents our blue world spinning serenely through black space as we live out our small and larger dramas, this body of work flips our perspective. Created from the ground, and drawing on local imagery of the natural and built environments, these paintings unfold against the constant bombardment and diversion of news and social media. Within them are traces of global fracturing and collapse, through which plants continue to reach toward the air.

Deirdre Frost is a Cork-based visual artist, working from Backwater Artist Studios, and is represented by Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin.

Her solo exhibitions include Tumbling Earth (2025) at Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin; Big Crush (2023) at Kilkenny Arts Festival; In Habitat, In Transition (2021) at Studio 12, Backwater Artists Group, and St Luke’s Crypt, Sample Studios; Claochló (2021) at Joan Clancy Gallery, Waterford; and Biophilia (2021), part of the Lavit Gallery Student of the Year Exhibition, Cork.