Sheila Naughton and Lorraine Cleary exhibit together at Custom House Gallery. Naughton works through abstract painting and drawing, finding colour, movement and light to show interior and exterior worlds. Her current work is concerned with the nature of transience and transitory experience, leading to deliberate and meditative works. Cleary is a multi-media artist, working in sculpture, photography, film, sound and performance. Using a bricolage approach to construct assemblages, she explores themes of trauma and exploitation, giving a voice to intangible events.
Sheila Naughton & Lorraine Cleary: 23 January – 16 February
A panel exhibition telling the captivating story of Count Paul Edmund Strzelecki, a Polish humanitarian who made an important contribution to relief during the Great Famine, will travel to the Galway City Museum. Commissioned by the Polish embassy and researched by historians Emily Mark Fitzgerald and Peter Grey, the exhibition also showcases rarely seen images of Famine relief and charity.
Paul Strzelecki: January – March
‘Cillín’, an exhibition of new work by photographer Tommy Weir, will be at the Dock, before travelling to the West Cork Arts Centre. The title refers to the burial grounds used for the remains of unbaptised children, often located at boundaries in the landscape, on the edges of townlands or along the edge of a body of water. In addition to his own photography, Weir has collaborated with poet Una Mannion and archaeologist Marion Dowd to explore these sites and the relationship between Irish society and death through the centuries.
Tommy Weir: 18 January to 14 March
At the NUI Galway QUAD Gallery, Juanjo Sierra exhibits ‘Nature/Light Dreams’, a series of limited-edition photographic prints. Through his images, the artist attempts to transmit the beauty and fragility of a natural world that is in danger. The connecting thread that unifies the personal selection of photographs is their natural light and its essence. His artistry includes composition, textures, natural shapes, creative techniques and the unique use of light.
Juanjo Sierra: 20 January – 6 March
To round off a successful year of promoting Irish art in London, Berlin and New York, the Hamilton Gallery presents ‘2020 Vision’, a group exhibition by twenty dynamic artists. Sculpture by John Behan, Carolyn Mulholland and Eileen MacDonagh will be included, as well as a range of figurative paintings by Clive Bright, Tina Brooks, Jonathan Cassidy, Paul Colreavy, Aidan Crotty, Medbh Gillard, Rebecca Jobson, Poílín Mc Gowan, Trudy Mooney, Tom McClean, Leonora Neary, Marilin North, Sorca O’Farrell, Cormac O’Leary, Eileen O’Sullivan, Emma Stroude and Treacy Sweeney.
2020 Vision: 5 December – 29 February 2020.
The Roscommon Arts Centre presents ‘Water Memory’ by Susan Mannion, winner of this year’s Roscommon Visual Artist Forum Award. Mannion combines her artistic practice with archaeology to create work that draws on the mythology of water sources in Ireland, the alchemy of copper enamelling and her love of wild swimming. Included is a large-scale enamel piece with more than fifty component parts that reflects water on to the gallery wall.
Susan Mannion: 29 November – 31 January
Galway Rediscovering The Claddagh A long-term exhibition ‘A Triumph of Unconscious Beauty’ on the history of the Claddagh Village shows at the Galway City Museum. Located on the mouth of the River Corrib, in the 19th and early 20th centuries the village was occupied by Irish-speaking fishermen and their families and was widely represented by artists and travel writers. While the traditional cottages disappeared in the 1930s, this exhibition offers a glimpse of the old village through paintings, sketches and photographs. Image: Trish Findlater
Galway City Museum: until May 2020
