You are invited to the opening of Strategies (of simultaneous presence and invisibility) Sat 26th Sep 6-8pm. the final installment of Laurie Legrand’s research on the delicate balance of standing one’s ground in times when protection and rights are “given” as quickly as they are “taken away”, and personal data is routinely taken for ransom.
Through painting, writing and installation, the exhibition interweaves Effaced portraits, Codified mark making, and figures shining their light, spilling their sacred findings, creating a feeling of reverence conveyed by the vulnerability of this act. Supported by Galway County Council Arts Office.

Leanne McDonagh is an Irish artist from the Traveller community. McDonagh records her community’s life and heritage from an insider perspective, subtly yet vividly capturing its circumstances and experiences. As she puts it, “If somebody else is showing what it is to look like a Traveller, I am showing what it is to feel like a Traveller.” McDonagh’s images portray family meetings, celebrations, scenes of labour and trade, domestic interiors and activities, and public gatherings. They emphasise both the distinct characteristics of Traveller culture and universal aspects of social relations.

Fishamble offers a one day immersion in practical discussions and exercises for playwriting. The workshop will particularly draw on Fishamble’s Forgotten by Pat Kinevane. The day will also have a particular focus on drawing the world around, to make effective and meaningful work for the public.  

This is a practical workshop suitable for writers of all levels. The aim of the workshop is to provide an encouraging and supportive environment which mixes discussion and creativity. Participants should come out of the workshop further strengthened as to skills needed to make successful drama,

Join us at South Tipperary Arts Centre on September 26th for the fourth instalment of Word Sparks!

Through Word Sparks poet and writer, Jenny Cox, invites writers to step in and engage with the 5 diverse exhibitions that will be running in STAC throughout our 30th anniversary year.

This morning session will offer creatives the opportunity to use varied and thought-provoking works of art part of our current exhibition, ‘coracle’ by Erica Van Horn and Simon Cutts, as prompts for sparking interesting conversations and fresh writing ideas.

Word Sparks is completely free, with no booking requirements, and refreshments provided.

Shortt’s paintings explore an underwater world where observation and imagination mingle. Her collaboration with Bantry Marine Research Station and her exploration of the wild kelp forests of West Cork draw on scientific research and encounters with the marine environment. Inspired by wildness and abundance, the paintings evoke a luminous world just out of reach, offering glimpses of the richness and possibility held within these marine environments, probing biodiversity, belonging, deep time and future long time. Preview by Dr Julie Maguire of Bantry Marine Research Station, 12–2pm, 26 September; thereafter Wed–Sun 12–5pm. Free entry.

Macalla Taoide
September 28th to October 17th

Launch :Thursday October 1st 6.30 pm

An Exhibition by Verona Stellet and Carol Kennedy

Through printmaking, sculpture and photography “Macalla Taoide” explores Ireland’s coastal landscapes candour ever evolving relationship with the sea.

Inspired by research trips along the Irish coastline artists Verona Stellet and Carol Kennedy reflect on themes of environment, memory, pollution and change, bringing together two distinct artistic voices in a thoughtful dialogue shaped by shared experiences of place.

Exhibition continues from 24/09/26.

For the 2026 Burren Annual, Burren College of Art presents Original Copy: Mushrooms, Megaliths and Maculate Monuments. The exhibition features Riccardo Carbone and John Strutton’s Original Copy in collaboration with John Cage, George Shaw and Marissa Stoffer. Through sound, performance, film and installation, the artists explore place, ritual, chance and ecology including a new response to Cage’s Mushroom Book works, loaned by Limerick City Gallery of Art. Supported by Clare Arts and Limerick Arts Office. The Burren Annual series of exhibitions brings Irish and international artists to the Burren to engage local and visiting audiences.

Exhibition continues from 22/09/26.

Cé Mise is an exhibition of 30 portraits of older members of the community of County Clare. The exhibition consists of 30 drawn portraits of residents of St. Joseph’s Hospital, Ennis and service users of Clarecastle Day Centre, Clarecastle, with accompanying interviews from each portrait subject

The artist is multi-disciplinary artist Rachel Macmanus, who worked in partnership with Clare Age Friendly Programme, The Rural & Development Department of Clare County Council. Rachel also worked closely with the staff at St Josephs’ hospital and Clarecastle Day Centre over 2025/2026 to realise this project.

A fun workshop and dance share event open to all ages. Come and join us for this intergenerational and intercultural event celebrating the joy of community and culture! No previous experience needed. All welcome!
THE WORKSHOP…Fun inclusive meet & greet warm up games, are followed by African, Hip Hop & Passinho dance introductory sessions. For the last part of the workshop, we are lead through some Irish Sean Nos technique followed by a circle dance. The event closes with a Cultural Dance Share open floor for facilitators
and participants to share their favourite dance styles and cultural heritage.

For more information and to book, click here.

Opening reception Thursday 01 October, 5.30-7.30pm. Wine by Bubble Brothers.

Artist talk, Saturday 10 October, 12pm

“I create paintings that explore work and the human experience of working. My artwork focuses on the routines, pressures, and expectations that shape everyday life, often highlighting how work can become repetitive, exhausting, or overwhelming. Alongside this, my paintings include a quieter subplot about the importance of free time. I am interested in the contrast between moments of labour and moments of rest, and how rare and meaningful unstructured time can be.”

Room Innate presents a new body of work by artist Danny Foley, developed through the Backwater Artists Group Moving Image Bursary, awarded to Foley in 2025.

This installation explores artistic play as a creative strategy for negotiating the self as shapeshifting, multifaceted, and inherently vulnerable. The show consists of black-and-white paintings on canvas, a stop-motion video, re-edited archival footage from his childhood, and small-scale clay sculptures. Through making, experimentation, and repetition, Foley uses these processes as a way to engage with uncertainty, doubt, and ambiguity rather than seeking to resolve them.

In Autumn 2026 Lavit Gallery continues its new group exhibition format focusing on a selection of new work by artists working across the Island of Ireland. Lavit Gallery is very loyal to its Cork artists but having a national reach is also important so that we can continue to stimulate and inspire our audience and customers with a variety of talent.

Confirmed artists participating in the 2026 edition of New Irish Art include Collin Crotty, Róisín de Buitléar, Stephen Doyle, Gabhann Dunne, Vanessa Jones, Vera Klute RHA, Michael Quane RHA, Michael Kobuladze, Ailbhe Ní Bhriain, Bennie Reilly, John O’Reilly and Charles Tyrrell.

Join us at South Tipperary Arts Centre on September 26th for the fourth instalment of Word Sparks!

Through Word Sparks poet and writer, Jenny Cox, invites writers to step in and engage with the 5 diverse exhibitions that will be running in STAC throughout our 30th anniversary year.

This morning session will offer creatives the opportunity to use varied and thought-provoking works of art part of our current exhibition, ‘coracle’ by Erica Van Horn and Simon Cutts, as prompts for sparking interesting conversations and fresh writing ideas.

Word Sparks is completely free, with no booking requirements, and refreshments provided.

Fishamble offers a one day immersion in practical discussions and exercises for playwriting. The workshop will particularly draw on Fishamble’s Forgotten by Pat Kinevane. The day will also have a particular focus on drawing the world around, to make effective and meaningful work for the public.  

This is a practical workshop suitable for writers of all levels. The aim of the workshop is to provide an encouraging and supportive environment which mixes discussion and creativity. Participants should come out of the workshop further strengthened as to skills needed to make successful drama,

A fun workshop and dance share event open to all ages. Come and join us for this intergenerational and intercultural event celebrating the joy of community and culture! No previous experience needed. All welcome!
THE WORKSHOP…Fun inclusive meet & greet warm up games, are followed by African, Hip Hop & Passinho dance introductory sessions. For the last part of the workshop, we are lead through some Irish Sean Nos technique followed by a circle dance. The event closes with a Cultural Dance Share open floor for facilitators
and participants to share their favourite dance styles and cultural heritage.

For more information and to book, click here.

Exhibition runs 02/09/26-01/10/26.

BIND is a programme of exhibitions of individual artist books as part of Cork Printmakers artist book library, activating the existing library and celebrating the new and innovative approaches to artists books as a both social and intimate durational art object.
The second edition of BIND presents bear witness, a limited-edition artist book by Elize de Beer containing a series of photo etchings, writings and drawings, enclosed within a clamshell box.

Veiled Realms draws attention to how lived experience can surface indirectly, through trace, interruption, and what remains partially obscured. In a year shaped by questions of endurance and aftermath, Kielt’s work offers a space where images shift, collide, and refuse fixed resolution.

Brian invites audiences into visual explorations of trauma, memory, and subjective experience.

Alongside the work on canvas, Kielt intends to utilise the space between the works, creating a series of charcoal-based drawings directly on the gallery walls that relate to and /or confront the paintings.

For Culture Night 2026, The Glen Tavern and F.L.P. (Fun Limerick Productions) present works from esteemed Printmaker and Painter Michael Culliney. His colourful, quirky and personal paintings feature pattern laced surfaces, with autobiography thrown in.

‘My work is about colour and when colours are layered how they can result in a balanced image. The image is an insight to my life’, Michael Culliney.
Exhibition continues until Friday Oct. 2. Proudly sponsored by Limerick City and County Council. Michael Culliney is an artist from Ennis, Co Clare, living in Limerick City.

“The 110 Beatitudes for the very place we stand on.”
An exhibition of paintings, print and a print installation
by Cóilín Murray.
A mixture of new and old works by the artist.
The show runs until 3rd October

Exhibition runs 27/08/26-03/10/26.

The Rocket’s Red Glare is a new Solo Exhibition by visual artist Barbara Diener. It explores the life and legacy of German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, examining the selective ways history is recorded and remembered. Through her own photographs and archival material, Barbara connects these themes to broader questions of memory, landscape, and environmental responsibility. The landscapes featured in The Rocket’s Red Glare act as witnesses to history, carrying traces of past events, conflicts, and cultural change.

Following an open call in the summer, the LASTA Youth Arts Festival will include Backspace, an exhibition of artworks that celebrates a return to slowness in an age of instant images, prepackaged experience, and mindless consumption. Through these analogue works, observation becomes radical and seemingly outdated media become a vehicle for scrutiny and resistance.

At the advent of the internet, Craig McDaniel and Jean Robertson understood that ‘through painting, one is subscribing to a world that is less frenetic in the glut of information being consumed…a world where the construction of meaning is more deliberate.’

Exhibition continues from 22/09/26.

Cé Mise is an exhibition of 30 portraits of older members of the community of County Clare. The exhibition consists of 30 drawn portraits of residents of St. Joseph’s Hospital, Ennis and service users of Clarecastle Day Centre, Clarecastle, with accompanying interviews from each portrait subject

The artist is multi-disciplinary artist Rachel Macmanus, who worked in partnership with Clare Age Friendly Programme, The Rural & Development Department of Clare County Council. Rachel also worked closely with the staff at St Josephs’ hospital and Clarecastle Day Centre over 2025/2026 to realise this project.

Caroline is very excited to present her first solo exhibition at Culturlann Sweeney. She is a painter working in a variety of mediums, including oil, acrylic, charcoal and encaustic.
Based in Kilrush, Co. Clare and having returned home over a decade ago from living in London, Caroline draws her inspiration from her surroundings. Memories of places visited as a child and revisited as an adult, spark images in full colour. Sight and sound often merge into experiments combing traditional and contemporary approaches which create expressive, original pieces.

Exhibition runs 08/09/26-08/10/2026

Z Yellow Persona Series by Julia Appelin. Step closer. Look deeper. See what emerges. Across fifteen vibrant abstract paintings, Julia explores colour, form, energy and intuition. Layers of charcoal, water soluble pencil, watercolour, ink, acrylic and copper come together to create mysterious characters, creatures and presences that seem to emerge from the paintings themselves. Experience pareidolia, our natural instinct to find familiar shapes and figures within patterns and abstraction. Each painting has its own persona and its own name, beginning with the letter Z. Together, they create a kind of modern folklore with mysterious undertones.

University College Cork Museum Studies Students and Cork Public Museum are proud to present ‘Life, Death, Legacy: Ireland’s Connected Bronze Age’. This exciting, student-curated exhibit explores the dynamic world of the Irish Bronze Age and shows how people from the past were not so different from us now.
‘Life, Death, Legacy’ offer visitors a thought-provoking experience using ancient artefacts from the Munster region. Themes such as feasting, death, luxury and metalworking are shown using burial urns, jewelry, and weapons, making it an unmissable exhibition. The exhibition opens on May 29th and is free for all visitors.

“The 110 Beatitudes for the very place we stand on.”
An exhibition of paintings, print and a print installation
by Cóilín Murray.
A mixture of new and old works by the artist.
The show runs until 3rd October

Room Innate presents a new body of work by artist Danny Foley, developed through the Backwater Artists Group Moving Image Bursary, awarded to Foley in 2025.

This installation explores artistic play as a creative strategy for negotiating the self as shapeshifting, multifaceted, and inherently vulnerable. The show consists of black-and-white paintings on canvas, a stop-motion video, re-edited archival footage from his childhood, and small-scale clay sculptures. Through making, experimentation, and repetition, Foley uses these processes as a way to engage with uncertainty, doubt, and ambiguity rather than seeking to resolve them.

Veiled Realms draws attention to how lived experience can surface indirectly, through trace, interruption, and what remains partially obscured. In a year shaped by questions of endurance and aftermath, Kielt’s work offers a space where images shift, collide, and refuse fixed resolution.

Brian invites audiences into visual explorations of trauma, memory, and subjective experience.

Alongside the work on canvas, Kielt intends to utilise the space between the works, creating a series of charcoal-based drawings directly on the gallery walls that relate to and /or confront the paintings.

The Rogue’s Gallery turns its attention to the human-made systems driving instability, and the ways power is staged, performed, and normalised. These portraits operate like contemporary history painting, using the language of classical figuration to confront a culture where influence is theatrical and “truth” is increasingly negotiable. In a year that repeatedly returns to what endures, and what collapses, Walton asks what we are choosing to preserve, and what we are willing to overlook.

An exhibition centered around a group of satirical portraits of the most powerful individuals shaping (and destabilizing) our world order.

Exhibition runs 27/08/26-03/10/26.

The Rocket’s Red Glare is a new Solo Exhibition by visual artist Barbara Diener. It explores the life and legacy of German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, examining the selective ways history is recorded and remembered. Through her own photographs and archival material, Barbara connects these themes to broader questions of memory, landscape, and environmental responsibility. The landscapes featured in The Rocket’s Red Glare act as witnesses to history, carrying traces of past events, conflicts, and cultural change.

In Autumn 2026 Lavit Gallery continues its new group exhibition format focusing on a selection of new work by artists working across the Island of Ireland. Lavit Gallery is very loyal to its Cork artists but having a national reach is also important so that we can continue to stimulate and inspire our audience and customers with a variety of talent.

Confirmed artists participating in the 2026 edition of New Irish Art include Collin Crotty, Róisín de Buitléar, Stephen Doyle, Gabhann Dunne, Vanessa Jones, Vera Klute RHA, Michael Quane RHA, Michael Kobuladze, Ailbhe Ní Bhriain, Bennie Reilly, John O’Reilly and Charles Tyrrell.

Sarah Long is an artist based in Cork. She creates autofiction that she translates across painting, performance and publication. Sarah identifies reverberations in Irish culture and combines these references with personal stories and motifs.

During this exhibition and residency in Triskel Sample Project Space, Sarah takes up the position of the girl or girlishness, to obfuscate archetypes such as woman or mother. Through her character Mary, Sarah engages in an autofictionalised approach. She will develop a new body of autofictional writing into a new performance.

Exhibition continues from 04/09/26-30/10/26.

LHQ Gallery is pleased to present thirty 6-inch top-down all-purpose, a new solo exhibition by artist Maitiú MacCárthaigh, exploring the shifting realities of contemporary rural Ireland through sculpture, installation and material experimentation. This exhibition coincides with Mac Cárthaigh’s exhibition hay boy, gay boy at Cork Printmakers Studio Gallery, opening on 10 September. thirty 6-inch top-down all-purpose will open at LHQ Gallery on 4 September at 5pm all are welcome. The exhibition runs until 30 October. LHQ Gallery is open Monday to Friday 9am – 5.30pm except for public holidays. 

Exhibition runs 02/09/26-01/10/26.

BIND is a programme of exhibitions of individual artist books as part of Cork Printmakers artist book library, activating the existing library and celebrating the new and innovative approaches to artists books as a both social and intimate durational art object.
The second edition of BIND presents bear witness, a limited-edition artist book by Elize de Beer containing a series of photo etchings, writings and drawings, enclosed within a clamshell box.

Limerick 9 & 16 September

Online 22 & 23 October

Free, registration required.

We are delighted to announce the return of New Life Old Buildings, our national programme exploring how caring for the buildings we already have can help shape more connected, sustainable and resilient places.

New Life Old Buildings brings people together to rethink vacant and underused buildings as spaces for connection, creativity and everyday life. Through shared learning and local action, the programme is helping to build a culture of care that values existing places as vital foundations for thriving, sustainable communities.

For more information and to register, click here.

For this new body of work, stone sculptor Martin Lyttle draws on the ancient image of the cornucopia — the horn of plenty — as a starting point for exploring abundance, consumption and our relationship with the natural world.
Working in local stone and most usually from off-cuts and waste material, Lyttle has created a series of elegant hand-carved sculptures inspired by seeds, fruits, nuts and pods. These familiar forms, gathered from the natural world, are transformed through stone into objects of contemplation and touch.

Opening 3 pm Saturday 12 Sept, 2026 – All Welcome

Gallery is open Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 5pm (or by appointment )

After the the After by Karl Burke & Lucy Gunning

How do we sustain artistic practice at a time when cultural space is becoming increasingly
precarious and privatised?
Do we move outside?
Can we move outside?
Bright-eyed and eager, we examined a number of alternative outdoor sites at Lismore guided by
Paul, mainly within the castle grounds and gardens, in search of zones for Karl and Lucy. The
visit took place on the hottest day of the year.

Image courtesy Lucy Gunning

Exhibition runs 10/09/26-12/11/26.

Cork Printmakers present hay boy, gay boy, a solo exhibition by interdisciplinary artist Maitiú Mac Cárthaigh.
Mac Cárthaigh’s work explores the rural sexual imaginary. Within this, Mac Cárthaigh’s practice focuses on rural gentrification, homonormativity, greenwashing, and the material economies of space and place. They approach work through a Country Boy’s Make-Do methodology, drawing on a Co-Op materiality. Mac Cárthaigh’s practice examines how we construct different kinds of rural space with a materiality not rooted in rurality but with things that come in off the back of a lorry to be bought off the shelf.

Opening day: Saturday 19th September 11am. 

Clare Arts Office in conjunction with the Edna O’Brien Library in Scariff is delighted to present It’s not what it SEAMS by Anita Nagy. Anita Nagy is a Hungarian-born surrealist and fantasy artist, who also creates commissioned portraits. This show contains a series of highly textured acrylic paintings, full of flower motifs. With her unique technique she creates the illusion of realistic embroidered tablecloth and lace decorations with the aim of paying tribute to her late mother, who was an embroidered artist, and to celebrate the beauty of embroidery art which is a very important part in her culture.

Caroline is very excited to present her first solo exhibition at Culturlann Sweeney. She is a painter working in a variety of mediums, including oil, acrylic, charcoal and encaustic.
Based in Kilrush, Co. Clare and having returned home over a decade ago from living in London, Caroline draws her inspiration from her surroundings. Memories of places visited as a child and revisited as an adult, spark images in full colour. Sight and sound often merge into experiments combing traditional and contemporary approaches which create expressive, original pieces.

An exhibition that explores the innovation of a series of flagship public art commissions initiated by Garter Lane Arts Centre and artist Garrett Phelan between 1995 & 1999.
Phelan, alongside then Garter Lane director Annette Clancy, gave no title to the programme or identified any of the events or encounters that occurred explicitly as art. Bypassing established ways in which art typically appears in public and embracing unconventional approaches and risk taking, the impact of these artworks three decades on still seem revelatory, with an abiding belief in artists to act and find new ways to critique, celebrate and investigate society.

Ormston House is delighted to present Alt-West / Alt-Thiar, an exhibition by the Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence (O.J.A.I.). The exhibition opens with a performance on Culture Night, Friday, 18 September from 6.30–7.30pm, and remains open until 9pm. Admission is free and no ticket is required.
The Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence (O.J.A.I.) was founded in 2015 by Chris Dreier and Gary Farrelly. This exhibition results from an invitation by Ormston House for the O.J.A.I. to direct their focus on Limerick and the Mid-West of Ireland. The resulting body of work is the culmination of a two-year investigation.

For Culture Night 2026, The Glen Tavern and F.L.P. (Fun Limerick Productions) present works from esteemed Printmaker and Painter Michael Culliney. His colourful, quirky and personal paintings feature pattern laced surfaces, with autobiography thrown in.

‘My work is about colour and when colours are layered how they can result in a balanced image. The image is an insight to my life’, Michael Culliney.
Exhibition continues until Friday Oct. 2. Proudly sponsored by Limerick City and County Council. Michael Culliney is an artist from Ennis, Co Clare, living in Limerick City.

Exhibition runs 08/09/26-08/10/2026

Z Yellow Persona Series by Julia Appelin. Step closer. Look deeper. See what emerges. Across fifteen vibrant abstract paintings, Julia explores colour, form, energy and intuition. Layers of charcoal, water soluble pencil, watercolour, ink, acrylic and copper come together to create mysterious characters, creatures and presences that seem to emerge from the paintings themselves. Experience pareidolia, our natural instinct to find familiar shapes and figures within patterns and abstraction. Each painting has its own persona and its own name, beginning with the letter Z. Together, they create a kind of modern folklore with mysterious undertones.

Exhibition runs 19/09/26-24/10/26.

Sister Weather is the latest instalment in The Glenkeen Variations exhibition series at the Goethe-Institut in Dublin. The exhibition brings together artists Susanne Bürner, Ines Kaag, Annette Kelm and Alexandra Leykauf in the Return Gallery at Goethe-Institut Irland. Drawing on their shared experience of Glenkeen Garden in West Cork, they transform the exhibition space into a car boot sale inspired by the Irish market tradition as a place of encounter, exchange and storytelling. Through photography, sculpture, video and installation, the exhibition interweaves observations of landscape, weather and everyday culture.

Following an open call in the summer, the LASTA Youth Arts Festival will include Backspace, an exhibition of artworks that celebrates a return to slowness in an age of instant images, prepackaged experience, and mindless consumption. Through these analogue works, observation becomes radical and seemingly outdated media become a vehicle for scrutiny and resistance.

At the advent of the internet, Craig McDaniel and Jean Robertson understood that ‘through painting, one is subscribing to a world that is less frenetic in the glut of information being consumed…a world where the construction of meaning is more deliberate.’