31/10/2025
Wex-Art Festival – final weekend
Just two days left to see the majority of these exhibitions on the Wex-Art trail (Oct 31 – Nov 01), supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Wexford Co Council.
Wexford Co. Council
Sidelong Glances: An Oblique Look at the Sea, with work from IMMA and invited high profile artists, including Orla Barry, Hernán Braun, Gary Coyle, Ann Hamilton, Ailbhe Ní Bhriain, Kathy Prendergast, and Marisa Rappard, is curated by Catherine Bowe. The exhibition takes its inspiration from a poem written by Marianne Moore in 1921, "The Grave", which stems from Moore's personal experience of observing the sea with her mother. “It is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing, but you cannot stand in the middle of this.”
The Pig Yard Gallery, Dave Daly
Dave Daly is a member of the Artists for Nature Foundation which harnesses the creativity of artists to highlight and protect threatened habitats around the world, so he is acutely aware of how nature subtly changes in ways some might overlook. He also emphasizes the fact that Wexford’s wetlands are of international importance and crucial for the survival of so many of our threatened bird species. A member of the Watercolour Society of Ireland, Dave has illustrated several books, including The Bird Atlas 2007-2011, regarded as the definitive statement on winter birds in Ireland and Britain. Official opening on October 16 at 7 p.m.
Westgate Heritage Centre, Wex-Art Festival Show
The annual Wex Art Festival group show is aimed at artists working in the south east with a particular focus on County Wexford. The idea is to give artists a platform to showcase their work to local, national and international audiences as well as the opportunity to work with different curators, such as this year’s guest curator, Karla Sánchez Zepeda. The theme of the 2025 exhibition is Rooted Utopias: Our Future at Play. The artists are Paul Carter, Mairead Holohan, Denise Kehoe, Jo Kimmins, Aisling Noone, Seamus O’Brien, Marika Sheridan and Liam O’Rourke.
Westgate Visual Arts Studio
Artists Mirona Mara, Laura Flood, Oonagh Latchford and Sarah Cogley at Westgate Visual Arts Studios are operating Open Studios for the duration of Wex-Art, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., where visitors will get to see finished artworks, works in progress and working studios.
Trimmers Lane Gallery
From Wexford, Ann Maria Bridges studied fine art painting in the Dun Laoghaire College of Art and was supported by Culture Ireland at a solo show at the West Wales Arts Centre in August. She has been drawn to synaesthesia in her oils, where one sense stimulates another, involuntarily and automatically. The artist Jade Fadojutimi has articulated how best she feels: ‘I bathe in the conversations between colour, texture, line, form, composition, rhythm, marks and disturbances.’
Krafted at Trimmers Lane
Photographers Kristin Grey and James Fitzpatrick and glass artist Pauline Quigley have come together for ‘Land and Legend’. Kristin is a Wexford-based photographic artist whose work explores the moods of land, sea and the sky. Her images evoke both atmosphere and legend. James captures motion within the stillness of a frame, unveiling a unique view of the world. Pauline, an award-winning glass artist, is recognised for excellence as a bespoke glass specialist.
Green Acres Gallery, Caroline Ward
Caroline Ward is exhibiting a striking new body of work at Green Acres. The centrepiece, The Living Canopy and Whispers of the Garden are composed of 15 panels (each 5 x 7 inches) created from vintage cloth and linen book covers. Once the bindings of antiquarian books, some over a century old, these covers bear the marks of time, with colour, texture, and patina deepened by age, light, and damp. Meanwhile, Meanwhile, the annual Green Acres Festival exhibition is one of the biggest group shows in the country. Many famous names have exhibited here during the Festival, including Neisha Allen, Margo Banks, Cheryl Brown, Ken Browne, Aidan Butler, Marian Campbell, Joe Dunne, James English, Martin Gale, Cara Gordon, Ann Hearne, Myra Jago, Taffina Flood, Stephen Johnston, Robert Kelly, Bernadette Madden, Helen O'Connell, Mary O'Connor, Gwen O'Dowd, Padraig Parle, Fergus Ryan, Robert Ryan and Neil Shawcross RHA, RUA.
Wexford Arts Centre. Ursula Burke
Wexford Arts Centre in partnership with the Highlanes Gallery is presenting Siren by Ursula Burke. Siren is an expansive exhibition that incorporates ceramic sculpture, textile sculpture, tapestry and mosaic sculpture. Greco-Roman inspired, surrealist mosaic sculpture take centre stage framed by major new monumental tapestry work. Having lived for over twenty years in Belfast, during and after the peace process, Burke has developed a unique continuum of exploration between political and aesthetic inquiries into trauma, wounding and repair in her practice. In form, her work creates an open system of correspondence between antiquity and modernity. Curated by Aoife Ruane.
Billy Colfer Room, WAC, Bravura 2025
Bravura 2025 features ceramics by Etain Hickey and Katharina Treml, glass by Andrea Spencer and Lucinda Robertson, work in wood by Alan Meredith, furniture by Knut Klimmek, jewellery by Eimear Conyard, work in metal by Cecilia Moore and Hugo Byrne and tapestries by Terry Dunne. Curated by Mary Gallagher who for over a decade ran the Blue Egg Gallery, just around the corner from the Arts Centre. The exhibition will be opened on October 18 (noon) by Gus Mabelson, ceramic artist and former director of the Ceramic Skills Course.
D’Lush Cafe, WAC, Polly Maher
Polly Maher’s practice moves between painting and photography, drawing on themes of rural Ireland, domestic spaces and the subtleties of stillness and sound. Her process is grounded in observation and memory: photographing locations and later translating those impressions into expressive, oil-based paintings.
Wexford Library, Ann Kenny
Is mise a bheidh ann is artist Ann Kenny’s visual response to a text written by award-winning Irish author and poet Gabriel Rosenstock, comprising a series of collaged monotypes inspired by the Irish/English text Is Mise a bheidh ann, That Will Be Me. Each of the selected images illustrates one page of this poetic meditation on death and grief. Ann works primarily with monotype, a printing process that creates one-off prints from a plate or printing surface. For her illustration work, she works into the monotypes with collage, pen and gold-leaf to build and create the illustrated picture.
National Opera House: Co. Council Collection
Works on loan from the permanent art collection of Wexford Co. Council by Sonja Stringer, Reiltin Murphy, Stan Clementsmith, Moira Scott, Norman Shaw, Neil Shawcross, Kate Wilson and Gillian Deeny will be in situ throughout the National Opera House.
Clarence House, 46 High Street, Paddy Lennon
Paddy Lennon’s formative experience of colour is of being bathed in the translucent colouring of the stained glass illuminating the rich, theatrical, ecclesiastical, architecture of his childhood. These experiences form the storehouse of his memory. He believes that all factors of his world, of life on both a personal and wider level are intrinsic to the creative process and in realizing his own vision.
The Kenny Gallery, Ann Martin Walsh, Seamus Kenny
Anne Martin Walsh is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work is rooted in landscape and landscape rituals that question ideas of gender through the lens of archaeological, historical, religious, and spiritual practices. Seamus Kenny’s paintings are characterised by bold textures, layered surfaces and the interplay of metallic tones where each piece explores depth and form in a way that balances raw materiality with refined detail.
Outside Wexford town:
Johnstown Castle, Trish Middleton
Trish Middleton’s work is inspired by a lifelong passion for the sense of place, having travelled for many years. In her tapestries, exhibited in the Cart Room, she sets out to utilise sustainably-sourced materials by sourcing raw wool, locally from farmers, using wool ends from factories and utilising handmade dyes.
Big Barn Art & Antiques, Anthony McCarthy
Anthony McCarthy brings a whimsy and vigorous kinetic energy to his paintings, always in the service of freedom of expression, memorably described as a Technicolor snapshot from deep in the subconscious.
Presentation Convent, Enniscorthy, Francis Scattergood
Through his evocative character studies and surreal compositions, Francis Scattergood captures themes of vulnerability, aging, aloneness, hope and optimism. Born in Dublin and now living in Wexford, Francis studied Fine Art and Design at the College of Marketing and Design, Mountjoy Square. Early in his career, his work was exhibited in EV+A Limerick and the Iontas Small Works Exhibition in Sligo, where he was a joint recipient of the EV+A award for visual arts. Curated by Lisa Byrne.
