What’s On around Ireland

IMMA Collection: Art as Agency is a major three-year display celebrating IMMA’s Permanent Collection as a source of agency and knowledge. Featuring over 100 artists, from the 1960s to the present, it highlights key works, including many recent acquisitions. This ambitious exhibition invites engagement and research over time, allowing for a rich durational experience of Ireland’s Modern and Contemporary Art Collection.

Through thematic, chronological, geographical, and media-based approaches, the exhibition examines how artworks connect across time and contexts, fostering new interpretations and relevance. Works from the 1960s to the 1980s evoke the foundational story of the Irish art world. While acknowledging the context of the modernist, predominantly male dominance of that era, the exhibition also spotlights the material innovation and socially engaged practices of others who persisted despite the relatively conservative status quo.

The exhibition also presents more recent practice that explores urgent global themes such as gender, hybridity, cultural histories, de-colonialism, diaspora, migration, food injustice, climate, and ecological change. Memory, imagination, and storytelling play pivotal roles in these works, offering generative ways to process fragmentation, dislocation, and survival in unfamiliar spaces. New and existing works in the IMMA grounds will extend these themes.

The exhibition includes a specially created ‘white cube’ gallery space inspired by Brian O’Doherty’s renowned series of essays Inside the White Cube – The Ideology of the Gallery Space (1976), that critiques the auratic, market-driven effects of the white cube gallery format. Likewise the choice of works curated for this space pushes back by highlighting works by Post-War American women, pioneering conceptualist artworks by Marcel Duchamp and Brian O’Doherty as well as a contemporary feminist response by Andrea Geyer.

By interweaving historical and contemporary narratives, Art as Agency invites audiences to reflect on the evolving meanings and possibilities of art in shaping our understanding of and action in the world.

‘Art in Motion’ Exhibition to Open at Baile Mhuire Day Centre.

Tralee Art Group is delighted to announce their latest collaborative exhibition, ‘Art in Motion’, which will be officially opened on Tuesday, June 17th at 2.30pm at Baile Mhuire Day Centre, Balloonagh, Tralee. The opening will be led by special guest Paddy Garvey, Chairperson of Baile Mhuire, and all are welcome to attend. Guests can enjoy an afternoon of art, music and refreshments in a warm and inclusive setting.

This special exhibition is the result of a unique collaboration between members of Tralee Art Group and the clients of Baile Mhuire Day Centre, showcasing the creative energy and expression of both groups. Featuring a variety of works in different media, styles and subjects, Art in Motion celebrates movement, creativity, and community spirit.

TAG is committed to enriching the cultural life of Tralee and surrounding areas. The group regularly holds exhibitions, workshops, and community projects, and has built strong relationships with local organisations—including an ongoing volunteering partnership with Baile Mhuire.

This exhibition reflects that partnership, with art created not only by TAG members but also by clients of the Day Centre who engage weekly in creative workshops facilitated by the group volunteers from Tralee Art Group. The result is a joyful and inspiring collection of artworks, each piece telling its own story of imagination, connection, and collaboration.

All are welcome to attend the opening and celebrate this uplifting display of artistic expression in our community. The exhibition will run for a year and be available to the public weekdays between 4pm and 5pm.

This is the first solo exhibition by renowned artist, poet and activist Cecilia Vicuña in Ireland. For this exhibition Vicuña’s delves into themes of ancestry, ecological urgency, and the interconnectedness of humanity inspired by the discovery of her ancient ties to Ireland.

O’Connell’s sculptural work often evokes states of becoming and transformation, reflecting her long-standing fascination between the organic and geometric in the natural world. This way of working melds irregularity and flow to the precise and mathematical, emblematic of a human relationship to nature.

Her attentive process is of happenstance: a responsiveness to a materials behaviour and chance occurrences that are worked through and feel not imposed but discovered. Through careful observation of the everyday landscape in her Cork home, O’Connell’s practice instills curiosity and an unexpected sense of discovery and awareness.

Exhibition continues from 14/11/2025 to 30/04/2026.

Winter Sun is a moving-image work by Cork artist Elinor O’Donovan.

The work is a preserved piece of a warm Cork summer, saved for the months when it is most needed. Taking as its inspiration the iconic view from the top of Patrick’s Hill at Bells Field, the video work is a looping film depicting Corkonians sharing a moment of togetherness, connected by their mutual appreciation for a setting summer sun.

Projection-Mapping: Lightscape Studios
3D Artist: Bassam Issa Al-Sabah
Cinematography: Jack Desmond

Part of Island City – Cork’s Urban Sculpture Trail

The life and work of Barbara Steveni (1928–2020), who described herself as an artist–activist, embodied an archive and pioneered a diffused art practice that resists clear definition.  The importance of Steveni’s role in the Artist Placement Group (APG) was often marginalised by gender-inflected terms such as ‘honorary secretary’, her practice is rarely recognised as having a value in its own right. This exhibition intends to redress this imbalance and encompass her life’s work, drawing together her practice and her experimentation with materials, media and strategies across a career spanning more than seventy years.

Pallas Projects/Studios are delighted to announce the participating artists in our Arts Council funded programme of Artist-Initiated Projects 2026. The series will be part of a programme celebrating 30 years of Pallas Projects/Studios. Between January–December 2026 we will present 8 x 3-week exhibitions of new work by:

Paddy Critchley, Fiona Marron, Finn Nichol, Emma Brennan and Thomas Wells, Ciara Rodgers, Struàn Bell, Christopher Mahon, neonatus.exe

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

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

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

Exhibition continues from 05/01/2026 to 31/07/2026.

To mark the 100th anniversary year of the publication of James Joyce’s masterpiece “ULYSSES”, the Irish Cultural Centre is delighted to Present this Spectacular Visual Art Exhibition.

‘Painting Ulysses’ comprises 18 magnificent paintings, depicting each of the 18 Episodes in James Joyce’s novel.  As each of Joyce’s episodes in ULYSSES was written in a different literary style, Hickey has designed each painting in a different visual style.

Maryam Tafakory is a UK-based, Iranian artist filmmaker who makes textual and filmic collages. Her work interweaves poetry, archival, and found material to explore depictions of erasure, secrecy, and censorship. In her essayistic videos, images and scenes drawn from a vast archive of films are reworked to examine intimacy, desire, and prohibition. She works with film and performance and is the 2024 winner of the Film London Jarman Award.

VISUAL is pleased to present DRILL, newly commissioned exhibition of moving image and sound installation by Naomi Sex. Working with both professional and non-actors, Sex has written and directed a series of scripted performances. These vignettes consider language, social interaction, absurdity and the limits of understanding. DRILL comprises a series of monitors, speakers and projectors, which present each piece as distinct but interrelated episodes, linked to each other in an installation that places the viewer in the centre of the work.

VISUAL is pleased to present Interloper, the first project by Anne Hardy in Ireland. For this exhibition of existing and newly commissioned works, Hardy has responded to the distinct architecture of VISUAL; the concrete and glass of the Link Gallery and its connection to the ornamental pond seen through the large windows, and the blank canvas of the Studio Gallery’s white cube design and its heavily patinated floor. Interloper marks a continued evolution in Hardy’s practice.

“Now now” by Andy Fitz uses language to record a passing moment in time. An out-of-date present is rearranged in minute detail as though the process might reveal something. Time remains static – the food never grows mouldy. Unremarkable domestic objects are balanced across the gallery in precarious abstraction from their usual surroundings. “Now now” is also a phrase whose function and meaning is dependent on tone; it can be understood as a warning, or a consolation. The sculptures build on these unresolved tensions; the personal in the political, the present in light of the past.

DCU Art Collection is honoured to receive a significant donation of fine art prints from artist and master printer James McCreary, one of Ireland’s most respected figures in printmaking, and his wife Elizabeth McCreary.

To celebrate this generous donation DCU are hosting an exhibition of of selected works from the James and Elizabeth McCreary Collection on DCU St. Patrick’s Campus. Featuring works by Jane O’Malley, A.R. Penck, Niall Naessens, James McCreary, Tony O’Malley, Maria Simonds-Gooding, Michael Cullen and others, the exhibition offers a rich insight into contemporary printmaking and the spirit of personal collecting.

Exhibition continues from 30/01/2026 to 08/11/2026.

To celebrate our 75th anniversary, the Lyric presents this new exhibition that showcases our rich history. A history which includes an art gallery (The New Gallery, 1963–1969), a literary magazine Threshold (1957–1990), a dance centre, a drama school, Belfast’s first music academy, and of course, a theatre.

Click here to view the full programme

Exhibition continues from 30/01/2026 to 05/04/2026.

This is the last iteration of the exhibition, Clann Miotlantach / Mythlantics following its presentation at Sirius Arts Centre, Galway Arts Centre, and Highlanes Gallery.

Alice explores expressions of both personal and broader historical and cultural narratives informed by their lived experience as a person with Irish and Sierra Leonean heritage. They practice across sculpture, expanded painting, digital collage, film, and performance, and use clay, found and collected images and objects, reclaimed and repurposed furniture, and memorabilia and heirlooms.

Exhibition continues from 07/02/2026 to 04/04/2026.

This exhibition is a celebration of Kilkenny-based Cartoon Saloon’s Academy Award®-nominated modern animated classics which comprise the Folklore Trilogy.
The exhibition presents a selection of pivotal scenes from all three films, demonstrating the unique visual style and exquisitely handcrafted animation which has garnered the studio international acclaim and multiple awards.

Mid-Term Family screenings of all three films will take place from Monday 16 February, and illustration and activity packs, developed by The Ark and suitable for ages 8 – 12 years are available to download for use at home or in the Classroom.

A multidisciplinary group exhibition featuring new and existing work by Tara Carroll, Sian Costello, Phelim Hoey, Áine O’ Hara, Day Magee, and Rajinder Singh. Curated by Aoife Banks. Affective Forms is a multidisciplinary group exhibition that explores evolving representations of the human body in contemporary Irish art through painting, photography, sculpture, and film. In Affective Forms, the works foreground sensation, relation, and response, positioning the body as a site where personal experience and broader social forces converge.

This exhibition presents a selection of both historic and newly acquired abstract artworks from the permanent Waterford Art Collection. Alongside artworks can also be found archival information, newspaper cuttings, and descriptions from the artists themselves, as well as critique by a cross-section of individuals invited and interested in demystifying this still often divisive visual language.

Artworks on show by: Arthur Armstrong, Shelia Naughton, Colin Middleton, Aidan Dunne, Phoebe Donovan, Julie Cusack, Anne Yeats, Susan Connolly, Ciara Rodgers, Jonathan Wade, Susan Montgomery, Darragh Lyons, Evie Hone, John McHarg and more…

Key Learnings… presents nine artists whose practice incorporates commodity culture, taking in branding, mass-market imagery, retail style, the domestic, advertising and packaging.

Noel Hensey   /   Caroline McCarthy   /   Emily Mc Gardle / Aideen Barry   /   Asha Murray   /   Liliane Puthod   /   Amy McNamara   /   David Timmons   /   Richard Collier.

An exhibition exchange between Belfast and Boston that looks at how place affects how we see art and each other. The exhibition invites people to think about difference, understanding, and shared experience through prints, collage, animations, drawings, sculptures and videos. Curated by Sam Toabe and Sarah McAvera, it asks if artworks can change meaning when shown in different countries and cultures. The works by artists connected to the University of Massachusetts Boston explore themes such as identity, work, migration, time, and loss. The exhibition encourages open thinking, empathy, and conversation across borders.

Exhibition continues from 10/02/2026 to 20/06/2026.

Portraits—The Failure of the State presents Brian Maguire’s portraits from three bodies of work that investigate the catastrophic impact of systemic violence without justice in Montana, United States; Bentiu, South Sudan; and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Maguire is an artist who looks outward, beyond the studio, engaging with the world and working in close dialogue with the families and communities of those erased, displaced, and forgotten by the failure of state institutions to serve and protect. 

Missoula Art Museum commissioned the portraits of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People of Montana for an exhibition titled Outrage and supported the project over five years.

Cork Printmakers presents Familiar, a solo exhibition by Ben Reilly at Cork Printmakers Studio Gallery which celebrates drawing through the mediums of etching and casting.
Opening Reception: 5pm Thursday 19 February 2026

In this exhibition, Reilly works with cuttlefish casting and etching; both processes utilising similar tools to inscribe a line into his chosen material (cuttlefish/metal sheet). The former is filled with molten alloy, the latter etched in acid and printed, with the action of making a line connecting both processes.

Exhibition continues from 05/02/2026 to 17/04/2026.

FAULT LINES is an exhibition of original art by Damien McGinley which focuses on the issue of male suicide.
It features 13 original oil paintings of icons who took their own lives. From Van Gogh and Hemingway to Kurt Cobain and Keith Flint, the collection runs the spectrum of masculinity from macho to maestro.​

Exhibition continues from 14/02/2026 to 02/05/2026.

Crawford Art Gallery and F.E. McWilliam Gallery announce an exciting collaboration on a new exhibition of contemporary Irish art. Constellations: Selected Work from Crawford Art Gallery brings artworks from the Crawford Collection to the F.E. McWilliam Gallery in Northern Ireland. It is an exciting moment for both galleries to collaborate and connect audiences with contemporary Irish art. Featuring the work of 14 artists based on the island of Ireland, Constellations highlights the depth and richness of Crawford Art Gallery’s
contemporary holdings within Ireland’s National Collection.

Official Launch February 28th @ 2pm, opened by artist Cecilia Bullo.
‘Outlandish’ is a meditation on the role of nature in the built environment, how it is both marginalised and idealised in the way we design and shape our cities. In this exhibition, using unconventional canvas shapes, de Forge encourages the viewer to rediscover positive relationships with nature, built on curiosity, playfulness, and respect.
Owen de Forge is a Dublin-based artist working across multiple disciplines including painting, sculpture, drawing, and documentary photography.
Tues-Sat 11:00-17:30

Bridge Street Studios will celebrate its 30th anniversary with an exhibition, ‘The things that matter most are the things that can’t be seen,’ hosted at the Basement Gallery, An Táin Arts Centre, Dundalk. The exhibition opens on Wednesday February 25th at 7pm and runs to April 4th. It features work by eight artists and craftspeople including Orlaith Cullinane, Rachel Tinniswood, Mary Cowan, Suzanne Carroll, Caóilfíonn Murphy O’Hanlon, Orla Barry, Sarah McKenna, and Fiona Quigley. The exhibition serves as a testament to the importance of shared creative environments and how that can creatively sustain the individual’s artistic development.

A Fragile Line is an exhibition comprised of a number of interrelated pictorial, sculptural and installation elements. The work is visually spare and delicate, acting as a set of poetic observations on how we understand and relate to the more than human world.

Thursday 26 February – Saturday 11 April 2026.
Curated by Margarita Cappock.

Opening Night: Thursday 26 February.

Waterford Gallery of Art is delighted to present ‘as below, so above’, a solo exhibition of new and recent paintings by Robert Jackson.

This exhibition brings together a selection of Jackson’s many and distinct series of works developed over the last 15 years including miniature portraiture and skyscapes (Tiny Skies), fragmented dream infused landscapes (Interruption Paintings), meticulous lace fabric studies (Secret and Solitary Vice), and an incredibly ambitious new large scale work developed specifically for the exhibition, ‘Your soul is a chosen landscape’.

Portraits of Herstory is an exhibition celebrating extraordinary women whose contributions have been downplayed, overlooked, forgotten, or erased from history. Through a series of mixed-media portraits, this collection honours and retells the stories of remarkable women who defied convention, broke barriers, and changed the world.

‘usual and generous ways’ presents works from artists working across a range of media, from Ireland and elsewhere, in which stone is not just a material to be shaped by the artist’s hand, but a subject-matter, object of inquiry, and an agent to be thought-with and thought-through.

Featuring: Richard Long, Barrie Cooke, Damien Hirst, Dorothy Cross, Seiha Kurosawa, David Beattie, Patrick Ireland/Brian O’Doherty, Patrick Hall, Anne Madden, Hilary Heron, Hamish Fulton.

Presented by Galway Arts Centre in partnership with the Irish Museum of Modern Art, curated by writer & poet Padraig Regan.

Map: GSNI

This exhibition of paintings and mixed-media sculptures by Bennie Reilly draws on her interest in museum collections, natural history, and her own interactions with the natural world. Her paintings stem from an ever growing archive of personal photographs, while her sculptural works combine bric-a-brac and natural artefacts collected over many years. Together, these artworks celebrate the oddities and allure of nature and its positive impact on our well-being.
The title derives from graffiti Reilly saw in a derelict hut overlooking a scenic salt lake in Formentera: “Follow your dream.” I

Exhibition continues from 19/02/2026 to 30/04/2026.

Cork Printmakers presents Familiar, a solo exhibition by Ben Reilly at Cork Printmakers Studio Gallery.
In this exhibition, Reilly works with cuttlefish casting and etching; both processes utilising similar tools to inscribe a line into his chosen material; cuttlefish and metal sheet. The former is filled with molten alloy, the latter etched in acid and printed, with the action of making a line connecting both processes. The work takes its inspiration from a mix of ideas, images and things that catch Reilly’s attention, from daily observations; an old yew tree, a disused church to the medieval cadaver stone slab of Thomas Ronan.

Exhibition continues from 28/02/2026 to 10/04/2026.

Stephen Dunne’s practice operates across the registers of painting, drawing, moving image and the investigation of speculative and theoretical fictions. The process of making, where each thing leads to the next through an experimental and intuitive approach, is at the core of this work. The work is realised as painting installations, books, printed matter, works on paper, animations, and as collective artworks (made collaboratively with others). Critical to this process is an interest in philosophy of mind, drawing on aspects of the subconscious to enable freer, less conscious or less self-reflexive aspects to come through in the final work.

Curated by Aisling Prior

Featuring 26 emerging artists with a Fingal connection, part of a series of initiatives for artists to mark Draíocht’s 25th Birthday.

Maria Atanacković | Maya Brezing | Lucy Carrick | Matthew Coll | Michael Shane Cox | Alex De Roeck | Aideen Farrell | Chris Forrester | Andrew Grace | Elizabeth Hogan | Uisce Jakubczyk | Sinead Kampff | Paula Leimane | Nathan Lowry | Nicole Manning | Justine McDonnell | James McLoughlin | Sorca O’Farrell | Kerrie O’Leary | Eileen O’Sullivan | Jack Pierce | Eileen Sealy | Annette Treacy | Aoife Ward | Catherine Ward | Diarmuid Woodcock.

A Tenuous Line is a multimedia exhibition presented by Niamh McGuinne, a Dublin-based visual artist whose practice combines print, sculpture, film and installation. Her work investigates the formulations of middens, accumulations of discarded material, and historical rubbish heaps. There are 77 midden sites situated in Mayo, 18 of which are sheltered in Clew Bay, typically containing shells, bones and other such remnants of survival. These middens are read as sites of temporary occupation. In A Tenuous Line, the “line” invoked is neither cartographic nor fixed; rather, it is a line drawn around resources, around bodies, around access.

Ulster University presents ‘The Shapes of Change’, an exhibition bringing together paintings by Joseph McWilliams (1938–2015) and his son Simon McWilliams, two artists whose work captures different moments of transformation in Northern Ireland’s recent history.

Both have strong links to the University: Joseph taught for many years as a lecturer in Fine Art, shaping generations of emerging artists, while Simon studied at Ulster University as an undergraduate before continuing his training at the Royal Academy Schools in London.

Intangible Bodies by Paul Moore opens in the Atypical Gallery from 5 March until 28 April 2026. Artistic Director Edel Murphy is excited to present this new exhibition in response to our Digital Exhibition Open Call. Paul utilises digital technology to explore themes and attitudes to disability in a most sensory way.

The exhibition opens on Thursday 5 March with a Late Night Art opening from 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm.
Keep an eye on our social media for news about the artist talk.

Pilgrim is a solo exhibition by Susan Mannion, an Irish artist and curator whose practice centres on enamelled metalwork and printmaking. In this body of work, Mannion interrogates the enduring human impulse to gravitate toward liminal waterscapes and sacred sites—spaces where narrative, ritual, and topography coalesce. Informed by her training as an archaeologist, Pilgrim traverses the material and metaphysical strata of the Irish waterscape, from the primordial bog pools and holy wells of Roscommon, along fluvial passages, to the Atlantic threshold at Westport in Clew Bay.
(Image: Water Energies, Enamel on steel wall panel 1m x 1m)

Biscuit Tin Nostalgia is a solo exhibition by visual artist Elize de Beer, presenting a new body of work developed through engagement with the Liam Kennedy photographic archive at UCC Library’s Special Collections and Archives. de Beer offers a glimpse into the recent history lived memory of Cork by exploring an archive which documents the daily life of Corkonians from the 1930s through the 1980s. de Beer forms a speculative nostalgic connection to the material, reimagining place and history through landscape, photographic fragments, and archival traces across photo etchings, mixed media works, and artist books.

SO Fine Art Editions Announces Margins: Fine art Photography by Michael Corrigan.

Preview: 5th March 5 – 7.30 pm and continues until the 4th April.

In ‘Margins’, Michael Corrigan presents a contemplative body of photographic work that reflects upon what lies at the edge: of land, sea and sky; of moments passing; of perception itself. The title carries multiple meanings and references; geographical, temporal, philosophical and poetic, and invites viewers to slow their gaze and consider what is often peripheral or taken for granted.

Kim Crowley is a curator based in Cork City. Her practice is concerned with expanded artist publishing as curatorial practice.
She will establish a curatorial research ‘office’ called the Office of Work (OOW) in the TRISKEL SAMPLE Project Space. The OOW looks to research and interrogate ideas around art making and labour. It will mirror the aesthetics of a traditional office, a nod to the need for creatives to enter environments adjacent to their practice.
The residency will culminate in an exhibition of materials gathered and recorded.

Crawford Supported Studios and LHQ Gallery present ‘This is Ireland’, a showcase of the work of sixteen artists working in supported studio settings: Angela Burchill, Bríd Heffernan, David Connolly, Eoin O’Brion, Íde Ní Shúilleabháin, John Keating, Judit Bakos, Katie Whelan, Marie Sexton, Mary Rose Marshall, Nicola Moran, Rosaleen Moore, Stephen Murray, Tom O’Sullivan, Ailbhe Barrett, and Yvonne Condon. Open at LHQ Gallery March 6th to April 24th 2026.

Exhibition continues from 06/03/2026.

The Living Ginger brings together a range of Jack Butler Yeats’s watercolours from 1895 to 1910, a formative period when his vivid sense of character and everyday life was emerging through dynamic, spirited compositions. The title comes from a phrase Yeats once used to describe the vitality he believed that all great painting should possess. That lively undercurrent gives these early works their enduring charge.

Château La Coste, an emblematic location for contemporary art in Provence, is delighted to present Stranger, an exhibition of sculptures by Northern-Irish artist Colin Davidson, running from the 7th of March to the 22nd of June 2026 at Pavillon Renzo Piano, in the south of France.

Internationally recognised for his strikingly emotional portraits, Colin Davidson proposes a major evolution in his art practice with Stranger. This exhibition marks the first large presentation of his tridimensional artworks, while staying anchored in his engagement with paint as a tactile medium, sensible and expressive.

Exhibition continues from 07/03/2026.

Flight by Sacha Hutchinson opens at Daróg Wine Bar on 02 March, bringing a study of Atlantic seabirds to focus at a time when our coastal birdlife faces increasing pressure.
Based in Barna, Co. Galway, Sacha Hutchinson is a practising artist with a Bachelor of Arts in Art and Design (2010). Working primarily in gouache and oil, her practice explores nature’s vulnerability, with a particular focus on Ireland’s Atlantic seabirds. Alongside her visual work, she writes environmental poetry and has been published in several poetry journals and art anthologies. She is also a member of the Hare’s Corner Collective.

Olivier Cornet Gallery is delighted to present Gairdín Rós | Rose Garden, Vicky Smith’s new solo exhibition.

In it, Smith focuses on her lived experience as a mother in self-portraits which reflect an image of motherhood as a state of mind that is not incompatible with creativity. Gairdín Rós comprises 7 paintings made during the first four years of motherhood. The show also includes new work developed during a two-week artist residency at Interface Inagh, Connemara, in June 2025. The exhibition is accompanied by a text by Dr Phillina Sun. Opens on Sun 8 March with guest speaker Marysia Więckiewicz, Curator & Board Member of Interface Inagh.

Rooted in personal experience, this exhibition draws connections between language, culture and selfhood. The paintings visualise the aftermath of genealogical research and an emotional response to discovering a hidden familial history. Themes of identity and cultural belonging are explored through symbolic overlaying as processes include building layers of paint and marks to suggest time, generational memory, and obfuscation.

Studio 35 gathers five artists; Kate O’Neill, Reuben Brown, Mollie Browne, Claire Ritchie and Síofra Minnis, who have each been the recipient of the QSS Artist Studios & Gallery Graduate Bursary. Since its establishment in 2019, the Bursary has been awarded to a graduate of Belfast School of Art annually, providing them with studio provision and supporting their transition from university into professional practice. Over the course of five years, Studio 35 has hosted five different artists, each leaving their mark on the space before passing it onto the next recipient.

The exhibition marks the first time these artists will be shown together, highlighting the range and variety of practices that have emerged from a shared site of production. From the earliest, now five years into their career, to the most recent, who recently began their studio journey, Studio 35 presents a spectrum of approaches and trajectories, reflecting not only on individual practice, but also on the role of QSS Artist Studios & Gallery in supporting early-career artists in Belfast. Rather than advancing a single narrative, the exhibition traces how this shared studio has acted as a grounding force, anchoring and propelling the distinct practices each artist continues to pursue today.

Belfast artist Farhad O’Neill, known for his sculptures, drawings, and public monuments, is proud to present at this exhibition a presentation of abstract paintings. These works, based upon both Nature and Culture, represent a new adventure in Art. Tá an t-ealaíontóir as Béal Feirste, Farhad O’Neill, a bhfuil cáil air as a dhealbha, a líníochtaí agus a shéadchomharthaí poiblí, bródúil as cur i láthair de phictiúir teibí a chur i láthair ag an taispeántas seo. Léiríonn na saothair seo, atá bunaithe ar an Dúlra agus ar an gCultúr araon, eachtra nua san Ealaín. Is é téama an taispeántais ná go bhfuil bunús na hEalaíne sa Dúlra.