Sarah O’Brien is an Irish painter whose work explores material process, symbolic language and the relationship between making, repair and transformation. Born in Cork in 1980, she completed an MFA in Painting at NCAD in 2007 and now lives and works in Kinsale, Co. Cork.

Síofra Minnis is a Belfast-based multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture and video, currently based at Queen Street Studios. Her practice investigates how archives, material culture, and systems of display shape our understanding of identity, with a particular focus on the colonial legacies embedded within the Irish landscape.

Artists’ studios are the place to visit to sneak a peek ‘behind the scenes’ of the Artist at work.

Sat 15 and Sun 16 Aug, 12pm – 4pm, FREE
Various Studios across Ards and North Down

This year there will be a number of experiences at the studios, such as demonstrations and talks, and you may even be able to have-a-go yourself! Works will also be for sale at some studios.

For full details of participating studios, visit: https://creativepeninsula.andculture.org.uk/whats-on/artists-open-studio-weekend

Join us for a workshop on Saturday 15 August that invites participants to walk along Derry’s historic walls and discover the hidden stories of the medicinal plants, fossilised sea creatures embedded in the stone, and the delicate ecosystem they sustain together. The workshop is facilitated by Daniel Godinez Nivon.

Through attentive walking, conversation and drawing, we will explore dreams as a shared territory where humans, plants, stones and other living beings may encounter one another.

For more information and to reserve a spot, click here.

Join us for a workshop on Saturday 15 August that invites participants to walk along Derry’s historic walls and discover the hidden stories of the medicinal plants, fossilised sea creatures embedded in the stone, and the delicate ecosystem they sustain together. The workshop is facilitated by Daniel Godinez Nivon.

Through attentive walking, conversation and drawing, we will explore dreams as a shared territory where humans, plants, stones and other living beings may encounter one another.

For more information and to reserve a spot, click here.

Artists’ studios are the place to visit to sneak a peek ‘behind the scenes’ of the Artist at work.

Sat 15 and Sun 16 Aug, 12pm – 4pm, FREE
Various Studios across Ards and North Down

This year there will be a number of experiences at the studios, such as demonstrations and talks, and you may even be able to have-a-go yourself! Works will also be for sale at some studios.

For full details of participating studios, visit: https://creativepeninsula.andculture.org.uk/whats-on/artists-open-studio-weekend

Exhibition continues from 02/07/26.

‘What Lies Within’ is an exhibition of work brought to you through a collaboration between three partnering organisations: Art is Collective (Belfast); Connections Arts Centre (Dublin); and Mencap Northern Ireland. These three outstanding organisations deliver programming that develops skills and professional ambition for artists who have a learning or mental health disability.

The work is eclectic and diverse. Each artist has worked independently on their own pieces. There is a common thread of exploration and discovery – uncovering what is seldom seen, the layers beneath, and finding a voice through arts.

Throughout August, Ards Arts Centre will play host to the principle Creative Peninsula exhibition, featuring exclusive works by the finest Artists and Makers from the Ards and North Down Borough

This exhibition will feature unique pieces of art and craftwork in a variety of mediums, specially selected for display in Ards Arts Centre and created in our Borough. This exhibition is a celebration of the exclusivity and quality of the artwork produced by local artists and makers and a fantastic opportunity to purchase a beautiful piece of art.

Each year the exhibition is themed, with each work taking inspiration from this concept.

Join us in the Sunburst Gallery throughout August to visit our visual artist at work!

The gallery will be transformed into a temporary working studio where you can watch Ross create work and learn more about his processes and inspirations.

Following a hugely successful solo exhibition in June, Ross will use his time to develop a body of experimental work on paper that explores ideas around light, colour and atmosphere.

Ross welcomes the opportunity to share that process, talk to visitors about the work and give an insight into how his ideas evolve through experimentation, revision and reflection.

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

Belfast’s Trailblazing Visionary Returns: A New Chapter of  A House of Play Explores Alice Berger Hammerschlag’s Groundbreaking New Gallery
The Lyric Theatre is delighted to present  The Return: Alice Berger Hammerschlag and the New Gallery, a new exhibition within its major anniversary show, A House of Play. This latest chapter revisits the bold legacy of the Lyric’s New Gallery (1963-1969) and its singular Curator and Director, Alice Berger Hammerschlag (1917-1969), bringing renewed focus to a remarkable and often overlooked moment in Belfast’s cultural history.

Exhibition continues from 19/06/26.

This exhibition is part of a self-initiated creative and educational programme by Lise McGreevy.

Currently NI and Ireland still have vast gender inequality across all aspects of society. At a time when the adult population in NI is a majority 52% female and 50.5% in Ireland. Inequality still reigns across all sectors of our community. This programme aims to support and promote female equality and diversity across race, religion, sexual orientations. Known for their emotion dexterity, by stripping away their differences, Lise has instead focused on the complex emotions that are felt by ALL females. With the aim of uniting us across NI.

Please note there is a £5 entrance fee into Belfast Cathedral.

Diarmuid Delargy is an internationally recognised painter, print-maker and sculptor.

He is renowned for his paintings of fish and sharks inspired from the Atlantic coast close to his studio in Sligo. His paintings are a personal commentary on the changing nature of the coast.

Over the past thirty years he has produced a body of work on the theme ‘Art and Extinction’ and more specifically the ‘Shark Series’ which relates to this broader theme.

“My interests don’t necessarily lie just in painting, I’ve had protracted spells of making prints, particularly etching and lithography. This experience has certainly affected my painting.”

Exhibition continues from 02/07/26.

‘What Lies Within’ is an exhibition of work brought to you through a collaboration between three partnering organisations: Art is Collective (Belfast); Connections Arts Centre (Dublin); and Mencap Northern Ireland. These three outstanding organisations deliver programming that develops skills and professional ambition for artists who have a learning or mental health disability.

The work is eclectic and diverse. Each artist has worked independently on their own pieces. There is a common thread of exploration and discovery – uncovering what is seldom seen, the layers beneath, and finding a voice through arts.

The team at Void Art Centre invite you to the launch of ‘Animale’, a solo exhibition by British-Finnish artist and composer Hanna Tuulikki that brings together new and existing film and sound works to explore how gendered identities are shaped through entanglements between humans and the more-than-human world.

The launch will take place on Saturday 4 July 2026, from 6-8pm at Void Art Centre. Refreshments will be provided, and we welcome BYOB!

For more information, click here.

Golden Thread Gallery presents The Ignorant Art School: Outside the Circle x Belfast, an exhibition and event programme inviting you to witness and respond to radical emancipation, resistance, survival and collective action inspired by and generated from feminist and queer movements.

Come and explore a dazzling array of archives, drawings, ephemera, manifestos, paintings, performance, photographs, sculptures, video works and writings reverberating with the attitude, poise and pose of feminist and queer ‘acting up’ and speaking the difficult truths of lived experience and social knowledge courageously to power.

Exhibition runs 13/07/2026-12/09/2026.

For Christopher Steenson’s solo exhibition All I see is the present, the artist combines sound photography, installation and archival material to explore the ways in which moments from prehistory can be used as a gateway to the present. The exhibition is the first manifestation of the artist’s long-term engagement with research exploring the prehistoric past of the island of Ireland.

Seacourt Print Workshop is delighted to welcome back the renowned Master Etcher, educator and author Nigel Oxley (Hon RE) for a special celebration of his remarkable printmaking career.
Nigel is well known for his outstanding collaborative work with many significant artists but this retrospective exhibition “Into the Light” offers a rare opportunity to discover and examine in some depth his own distinctive printmaking journey and practice, with prints spanning from the early 1970s to the present day.
The exhibition opens on Thursday, 30th July at 6.00pm.

Nigel will also be talking about his work on Friday, 31st at 3–5pm.

Join us in the Sunburst Gallery throughout August to visit our visual artist at work!

The gallery will be transformed into a temporary working studio where you can watch Ross create work and learn more about his processes and inspirations.

Following a hugely successful solo exhibition in June, Ross will use his time to develop a body of experimental work on paper that explores ideas around light, colour and atmosphere.

Ross welcomes the opportunity to share that process, talk to visitors about the work and give an insight into how his ideas evolve through experimentation, revision and reflection.

Throughout August, Ards Arts Centre will play host to the principle Creative Peninsula exhibition, featuring exclusive works by the finest Artists and Makers from the Ards and North Down Borough

This exhibition will feature unique pieces of art and craftwork in a variety of mediums, specially selected for display in Ards Arts Centre and created in our Borough. This exhibition is a celebration of the exclusivity and quality of the artwork produced by local artists and makers and a fantastic opportunity to purchase a beautiful piece of art.

Each year the exhibition is themed, with each work taking inspiration from this concept.

A new three-person exhibition from Martin Wedge, Alastair MacLennan & Éanna Mac Cana – featuring a vast collection of A4 Drawings and video work from the artists. These compelling works on paper are the result of countless plein-air drawing sessions which the artists have undertaken in recent years in Botanic Park, Belfast. ‘Fós’ is the convergence of the artist’s shared relationship, a subconscious criss-crossing of personal and universal ideas. All work presented together – each with it’s own respective personality – will form part of a larger abstract, one singular textured expression within the gallery.

Inspired by Palaeolithic artefacts, this three-dimensional body of work considers the hand-made marks left by Homo sapiens. Modelled in porcelain and stoneware clay by hand, the ceramic bodies retain vitrified anatomical imprints. Fragments of shell, flint and stone debitage are interwoven into some of the pieces. These have been retrieved from the floor of the Bann Estuary and Lough Foyle at low tide, connecting the viewer with Irelands ancient history. The receptacles feature engraved cryptic messages and texts bound up within paper scrolls. Sealed behind glass, these curated, mixed-media displays represent hidden knowledge.

Margaret Mathews is a retired dentist with a lifelong interest in art, but studied and practiced dentistry in her own practice for many years.

She is an Honorary Diploma holder in the Ulster Society of Women Artists and belongs to various Art Societies including the Pastel Society of Ireland, the Medical Art Society, East Antrim Artists and is a Friend of the Equestrian Art Society.

Equestrian art, life drawing, still life and portraiture are favourite subjects and her work can be found in exhibitions both here and abroad.

Some of Margaret’s work can be viewed here.