Galway International Arts Festival's 2026 Visual Arts Programme brings together leading Irish and international artists whose work explores memory, identity, landscape, community and the ways we inhabit the world around us.
Several exhibitions this year consider how individuals and communities occupy, shape and remember shared spaces, inviting audiences to reflect on the relationship between people, place and public life. Across sculpture, photography, installation and interdisciplinary practice, the programme demonstrates the capacity of art to transform how we experience and understand the spaces we inhabit.
The programme also reflects Galway International Arts Festival's long-standing practice of transforming and repurposing spaces across the city for artistic use. From the Festival Gallery on William Street to the Printworks Gallery on Market Street, familiar buildings are once again reimagined as cultural venues, creating opportunities for ambitious exhibitions and inviting audiences to experience the city in new ways.
Highlights of this year's programme include Presence, a major exhibition by internationally acclaimed sculptor Sean Henry. Installed at the Festival Gallery and in public locations including Eyre Square and Middle Arch, Claddagh, Presence presents Henry's quietly monumental figures - works that transform everyday moments into encounters that are both familiar and uncanny. Widely recognised for his distinctive figurative sculptures, Henry creates works that invite viewers to pause, reflect and reconsider their relationship with public space, memory and one another.
Also presented as part of the Festival is Ireland at Venice - Assembly, Ireland's acclaimed Pavilion from the 2025 Venice Biennale of Architecture curated by Cotter and Naessens Architects. Presented at the O'Donoghue Theatre, University of Galway, Assembly explores how architecture can bring people together. Inspired by Ireland's Citizens' Assembly, the multi-sensory installation combines architecture, craft, sound and storytelling to examine collective participation, shared responsibility and the ways communities can imagine new futures. Together, Presence and Assembly position public space, participation and collective experience at the heart of this year's programme.
Photography features strongly throughout the programme. At the Printworks Gallery, Jackie Nickerson's Stateside offers a layered portrait of contemporary America, examining identity, labour, landscape and social change through her distinctive photographic practice. Alongside this, Lorraine Tuck's Limbo explores histories of loss, remembrance and resilience through evocative landscapes that consider how memory becomes embedded within place.
Also at the Printworks Gallery, Dolores Lyne's Rebel Kin: To the Letter draws on Civil War correspondence to create an intimate reflection on political division, family relationships and the enduring impact of conflict. Through letters, archival material and contemporary artistic intervention, the exhibition bridges private experience and national history.
At Interface Lough Inagh, Connemara, Aleana Egan presents A Maritime Child, a site-responsive exhibition engaging with the building's former life as a salmon hatchery. Reflecting on adaptation, repair and transformation, the work creates a dialogue between architecture, landscape and memory, responding to the unique history and atmosphere of the site.
At Galway Arts Centre, John Rainey presents Deviations, an exhibition of cast porcelain, metal and marble sculptures that reconfigure the visual language of classical statuary to propose alternative sculptural histories. The Kenny Gallery presents Ómós, a celebration of the work of the late Gertrude Degenhardt. Renowned for her distinctive graphic style and imaginative visual language, Degenhardt's work continues to resonate through its wit, humanity and singular artistic vision.
Elsewhere across the city, exhibitions continue Galway International Arts Festival's long-standing commitment to supporting contemporary artistic practice and providing platforms for artists at all stages of their careers. Engage Art Studios hosts a new exhibition by James Wellwood, while Artspace Studios celebrates its 40th anniversary with a special exhibition marking four decades of supporting artists and creative communities in Galway. Together, these exhibitions highlight the vital role artist-led organisations play in sustaining cultural life in the city and fostering creative experimentation.
New work by Luke Reidy at the Outset Gallery, Sioban Piercy at Thoor Ballylee, and Tadhg Ó Cuirrín at 126 Artist-Run Gallery further reflects the Festival's commitment to artists whose practices are rooted in place, experimentation and lived experience. Spanning sculpture, installation, painting and interdisciplinary approaches, these exhibitions engage with personal histories, local landscapes and contemporary realities, offering fresh perspectives on the social, cultural and physical environments that shape our lives. Together they underscore the breadth and diversity of contemporary artistic practice across Ireland.
By bringing together artists working across disciplines, generations and geographies, Galway International Arts Festival's 2026 Visual Arts Programme creates spaces for reflection, dialogue and discovery. Through exhibitions that explore memory, landscape, community and public space, the programme demonstrates the power of art to deepen our understanding of ourselves, our histories and the world we share.
Galway International Arts Festival would like to acknowledge the support of its principal funding agencies The Arts Council and Fáilte Ireland; its Drinks Partner Heineken®; and its Education Partner University of Galway.
