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.

Paul Sheehan and Murilo Ortunho will lead a workshop and present a short participatory performance based on the outcomes of their week-long artistic residency at STAC Chapel. The public sharing will consist of gestural, movement, and awareness exercises in which participants will explore physical theatre, dance, and Labanotation.

1:00–4.30PM (including 20-minute break)
Bring water and a light snack
Wear comfortable clothing, preferably black or neutral colours

Ages 18+, no theatre/dance experience required

Free event, click here to register.

STAC Residencies are supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Tipperary County Council

On Saturday, 5 September there will be a special closing event for ‘Energy Made Visible’ from 4-5pm at Ormston House. Admission is free and no ticket is required.

The celestial and scientific qualities of Michael Ashur’s work resonate with developments in electronic music, particularly the Berlin School of the 1970s. Jürgen Simpson and Neil O’Connor will respond to this exhibition with a live performance that explores the timbral and rhythmic qualities of that era, using custom sequencing systems and modular synthesis.

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.

‘The Heavenly (In)Visibles’ is Patsy Atkinson’s MA by Research final exhibition in which she materialises Mary Oliver’s deep reverence for the natural world and her gentle call to notice nature with wonder.

In keeping with Mary Oliver’s contemplative creative processes, Patsy uses slow, meditative and nature-based processes, including ecoprinting, paper-making, monoprinting and natural dyeing using plants sustainably foraged from the hedgerows of Sherkin Island.

Paul Sheehan and Murilo Ortunho will lead a workshop and present a short participatory performance based on the outcomes of their week-long artistic residency at STAC Chapel. The public sharing will consist of gestural, movement, and awareness exercises in which participants will explore physical theatre, dance, and Labanotation.

1:00–4.30PM (including 20-minute break)
Bring water and a light snack
Wear comfortable clothing, preferably black or neutral colours

Ages 18+, no theatre/dance experience required

Free event, click here to register.

STAC Residencies are supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Tipperary County Council

Ormston House presents ‘Energy Made Visible’.

The exhibition will open on Friday, 10 July from 7-9pm and will continue until 5 September 2026.

Energy Made Visible is a group exhibition centred around the paintings of Michael Ashur (1950–2024). Known for his meticulous airbrushed compositions, Ashur’s work is concerned with solar systems, celestial bodies, and overlaps between artistic and scientific disciplines. This exhibition places Ashur’s work in dialogue with four contemporary Irish artists; Ann Maria Healy, Sean Lynch, Thaís Muniz, and Garrett Phelan.

Opening Hours: Wednesday – Saturday, 12-6pm.

Clare Arts Office in conjunction with Cultúrlann Sweeney is delighted to present an exhibition by members of Limerick Art Society. Limerick Art Society has been a major contributor to the visual arts in Limerick City and County for over 80 years making it one of the oldest societies of its kind in Ireland. “The aims of the society are to bring art to people of all walks of life and to help the less experienced as well as accomplished artists to achieve artistic excellence”. Its focus is on the visual arts: painting in oils, watercolours, acrylic and pastel and photography.

On Saturday, 5 September there will be a special closing event for ‘Energy Made Visible’ from 4-5pm at Ormston House. Admission is free and no ticket is required.

The celestial and scientific qualities of Michael Ashur’s work resonate with developments in electronic music, particularly the Berlin School of the 1970s. Jürgen Simpson and Neil O’Connor will respond to this exhibition with a live performance that explores the timbral and rhythmic qualities of that era, using custom sequencing systems and modular synthesis.

Meascán — Fine Art Master’s Show

LSAD, Clare Street, Limerick | 31 August – 8 September 2026

The Fine Art Master’s group at Limerick School of Art and Design (LSAD) presents Meascán, the final exhibition of their Master’s programme, opening to the public on 31 August 2026. Opening reception 3pm 03/09/26.

GOMA Waterford is delighted to invite you to ‘At Night the Hens Stand and Dream’, an art exhibition by Niamh Coffey.
Official opening: 20th of August, 6-8PM. Free Entry, all welcome!

In this exhibition, forms of flesh, fur, flower and feather mingle and merge. Subjects create symbiotic and antagonistic relationships, exhibit absurd actions and explore neoteric habits together. This work is guided by the concept of queer ecology, which asks us to abandon ideas of human exceptionalism and anthropomorphism and instead asks us to see humans as part of a complex and interwoven system, whose patterns and processes are different from our own.

Clare Arts Office in conjunction with the Edna O’Brien Library in Scariff is delighted to present East Clare Love by Joe Culhane. East Clare Love reflects the work that will be presented, paintings co-created with the immensely beautiful locations and beings of East County Clare. Joe has engaged in various artistic endeavours throughout his life, including stretch fabric art based on sacred geometric designs. He loves painting using many mediums but finds himself mostly dabbling in the world of watercolours.

Clare Arts Office in conjunction with Clare Museum is delighted to present: Marked: Bodies, Barcodes and Binding an art exhibition by Barry Wrafter.
Barry Wrafter is a Clare-based artist and public sculptor. In this exhibition, Wrafter turns his precision at sculpting toward the painted surface, rendering hyper-real, faceless figures,  bulbous-headed and stripped of individuality, as if poured from the same anonymous mould. What emerges is less a series of images than a ledger, a quiet, methodical account of what we manufacture when we decide a body is only ever material.

The celebrated sculptor was born in Derry, Northern Ireland. Her studies in Cork and Boston were followed by research fellowships in Rome and New York. After living in London for 14 years, Eilís returned to live in Ireland in 2002, exhibiting at home and abroad and working on commissions for public and private locations across Europe. She is a founder director of the National Sculpture Factory in Cork, a former member of the Arts Council of Ireland, a member of Aosdána, and a member of the RHA.

The exhibition will be previewed by IMMA curator Seán Kissane, 12–2pm, Saturday 15 August. The exhibition will be open until 13 September, Wed–Sun 12

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.

Ormston House presents ‘Energy Made Visible’.

The exhibition will open on Friday, 10 July from 7-9pm and will continue until 5 September 2026.

Energy Made Visible is a group exhibition centred around the paintings of Michael Ashur (1950–2024). Known for his meticulous airbrushed compositions, Ashur’s work is concerned with solar systems, celestial bodies, and overlaps between artistic and scientific disciplines. This exhibition places Ashur’s work in dialogue with four contemporary Irish artists; Ann Maria Healy, Sean Lynch, Thaís Muniz, and Garrett Phelan.

Opening Hours: Wednesday – Saturday, 12-6pm.

Love beyond the species and the sexual by Siobhán McGibbon opening on Saturday 25 July at 2.00pm by Dr. Sarah Kelleher, writer and curator.

Love beyond the species and the sexual is a major solo exhibition by Siobhán McGibbon at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre. The exhibition presents a chapter of McGibbon’s ongoing speculative world, Xenophon, a long-term project that imagines more-than-human futures through fiction, science and sculpture. Told across three acts, it moves from the artist’s unkempt garden into the ecologies, histories and more-than-human communities of Myross Woods, Leap, Co. Cork.

“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

Clare Arts Office in conjunction with the Edna O’Brien Library in Scariff is delighted to present East Clare Love by Joe Culhane. East Clare Love reflects the work that will be presented, paintings co-created with the immensely beautiful locations and beings of East County Clare. Joe has engaged in various artistic endeavours throughout his life, including stretch fabric art based on sacred geometric designs. He loves painting using many mediums but finds himself mostly dabbling in the world of watercolours.

Clare Arts Office in conjunction with Cultúrlann Sweeney is delighted to present an exhibition by members of Limerick Art Society. Limerick Art Society has been a major contributor to the visual arts in Limerick City and County for over 80 years making it one of the oldest societies of its kind in Ireland. “The aims of the society are to bring art to people of all walks of life and to help the less experienced as well as accomplished artists to achieve artistic excellence”. Its focus is on the visual arts: painting in oils, watercolours, acrylic and pastel and photography.

Oil painting exhibition reflecting Hayes’ six months living and working as a Great Blasket Island caretaker. Bringing his longstanding exploration of self and surroundings to this unique setting, he captures the world he encountered, its modern cast of characters, and its contemporary way of life. The paintings examine the dynamic relationship between past and present, exploring the inherent nature of ‘islandness’ and the distinctly liminal sense of place. His re-presentations of the island are painted with honesty and sincerity. Suspending some of the persistent preconceptions about islands, he challenges and re-contextualises them, creating a more nuanced picture.

James Hayes is a visual artist from county Kerry. He primarily operates as an oil-painter, but is also an accomplished muralist, illustrator and a qualified architect. His artistic practice is centred around a personal and phenomenological exploration of the complex relationship that exists between self and surroundings. His work has been characterised as a unique blended form of contemporary engagement with both the genre of ‘landscape’ painting and an intimate narrative painting tradition; eschewing hierarchy and category in favour of equal focus on both landscapes and figures. He is a self-styled painter of the space between people_and_place.

The celebrated sculptor was born in Derry, Northern Ireland. Her studies in Cork and Boston were followed by research fellowships in Rome and New York. After living in London for 14 years, Eilís returned to live in Ireland in 2002, exhibiting at home and abroad and working on commissions for public and private locations across Europe. She is a founder director of the National Sculpture Factory in Cork, a former member of the Arts Council of Ireland, a member of Aosdána, and a member of the RHA.

The exhibition will be previewed by IMMA curator Seán Kissane, 12–2pm, Saturday 15 August. The exhibition will be open until 13 September, Wed–Sun 12

Clare Arts Office in conjunction with Clare Museum is delighted to present: Marked: Bodies, Barcodes and Binding an art exhibition by Barry Wrafter.
Barry Wrafter is a Clare-based artist and public sculptor. In this exhibition, Wrafter turns his precision at sculpting toward the painted surface, rendering hyper-real, faceless figures,  bulbous-headed and stripped of individuality, as if poured from the same anonymous mould. What emerges is less a series of images than a ledger, a quiet, methodical account of what we manufacture when we decide a body is only ever material.

GOMA Waterford is delighted to invite you to ‘At Night the Hens Stand and Dream’, an art exhibition by Niamh Coffey.
Official opening: 20th of August, 6-8PM. Free Entry, all welcome!

In this exhibition, forms of flesh, fur, flower and feather mingle and merge. Subjects create symbiotic and antagonistic relationships, exhibit absurd actions and explore neoteric habits together. This work is guided by the concept of queer ecology, which asks us to abandon ideas of human exceptionalism and anthropomorphism and instead asks us to see humans as part of a complex and interwoven system, whose patterns and processes are different from our own.

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 Heavenly (In)Visibles’ is Patsy Atkinson’s MA by Research final exhibition in which she materialises Mary Oliver’s deep reverence for the natural world and her gentle call to notice nature with wonder.

In keeping with Mary Oliver’s contemplative creative processes, Patsy uses slow, meditative and nature-based processes, including ecoprinting, paper-making, monoprinting and natural dyeing using plants sustainably foraged from the hedgerows of Sherkin Island.

‘According to my Eyes’ is a solo exhibition by Siobhán Collins at MTU Cork School of Music. In this new body of work, paintings of familiar subjects hover between recognition and uncertainty, inviting viewers to linger and look again. The works draw attention to the physical act of painting as much as to what is represented. The artist will be present at the exhibition for a few informal sessions:

Sat 29 August, 2–4pm

Sat 5 September, 2–4pm

Fri 18 September, 6–8pm

This is an opportunity to see the paintings and have a conversation about the work. The show is open daily, including weekends. All welcome.

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.

Meascán — Fine Art Master’s Show

LSAD, Clare Street, Limerick | 31 August – 8 September 2026

The Fine Art Master’s group at Limerick School of Art and Design (LSAD) presents Meascán, the final exhibition of their Master’s programme, opening to the public on 31 August 2026. Opening reception 3pm 03/09/26.

Exhibition runs 27/08/26-19/09/26.

The work for this exhibition looks at the female body as it collides with institutional policies and procedures. The sculptures reflect the traumatised birth with its intrusive procedures resulting in the loss of bodily autonomy. 

Women’s bodies are a landscape, a site of contention and control. It is within maternity institutions where interventions, policy, procedure and tolerances dominate and leave women outside of decisions made about their bodies. 

Lorraine Parker is an emerging visual artist based in Cork. In 2021 she graduated from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design (CCAD) with a BA First Class Hons in Contemporary Applied Art

Exhibition runs 27/08/26-19/09/26.

Psychogeography features paintings by Michaela McCann, Sarah Vandemeer and James Wellwood.
Psychogeography explores how places and spaces shape our mood and our behavior as we experience them. The term was first coined by the Marxist theorist Guy Debord in 1955, a founding member of the Situationist movement who were a group of revolutionary minded artists that aimed to make radical culture a direct part of daily life. Debord, and others influenced by him, concentrated on urban environments but for this exhibition we have turned our attention to the rural environment.

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.