Art exhibitions in 2024 showed a breadth of ambition among Ireland’s curators, perhaps inspired by the sense of catastrophe lurking out in the misted distance. Shows about the meaning of time and the horrors of war, meditations on breathing and on the nature of nature itself gave viewers plenty to ponder.
Now that our existential threats are somewhat more tangible, things seem to have paradoxically settled down a bit artwise. A theme of collective activity and social purpose hovers at the edges of things, which makes 2025 intriguing. While one of the wonders of regular art-viewing is to be found in the discovery of unexpected gems, these exhibitions look to be excellent bets.
RDS Visual Arts Awards and 195th RHA Annual Exhibition
Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, until January 18th, and from May 26th to August 3rd, rhagallery.ie
The RDS Visual Arts Awards exhibition showcases an exciting constellation of rising stars and has a record that proves the selectors to be right (most of the time), but the RHA Annual is a much more sweeping cacophony of who’s making and painting what, from just-emerged graduates to venerable academicians. With almost everything for sale, and prices generally going from under €100 to sky’s the limit, it’s a great moment for starting or adding to your collection. Also at the RHA in 2025 is last year’s postponed BogSkin, a group show exploring what lies beneath Ireland’s soggy peat. Definitely worth a dip, it runs from January 31st to April 20th.
All Flowers in Time Bend Towards the Sun
Coach House, Dublin Castle, February 13th to May 11th, hallahanwelch.com
Inspired by the writings of Flann O’Brien, this exhibition features the work of a line-up of artists that is both intriguing and stellar. Nina Canell, Elizabeth Peyton, Aleana Egan, Genieve Figgis, William McKeown, Adrian O’Carroll, Samir Mahmood, Eva Rothschild, Marcel Vidal and more explore ideas of how nothing is quite as it seems, and what appears to be opposite is more likely to be unexpectedly connected. Curated by Paul Hallahan and Lee Welch, whose work also features, the exhibition gives a chance to see a previously unexhibited self-portrait by the writer and artist Christy Brown.
Array Collective
Rua Red, Dublin, February 14th to May 3rd, ruared.ie
Winners of the Turner Prize in 2021, Belfast’s Array Collective create an exhibition based on a 2024 commission from Rua Red, exploring themes of protest and the movement of people. Expect to get involved as you view: visitors are promised communion, reflection, play and even “cathartic karaoke”. What better reason to visit Tallaght in spring? In March the brilliant artist and farmer Orla Barry takes up residency, so look out for her commissioned new work later in the year, as she gets together with the local rural community, looking at life and farming in Bohernabreena, Redgap, Glenasmole and Brittas.
Kunstkammer
Lismore Castle Arts, Waterford, March 22nd to October 26th, lismorecastlearts.ie
Back in the day, wealthy collectors liked to shove a welter of finds in together, from bits of meteorite to taxidermy, fabulous furniture to remarkable artworks. Marking the 20th anniversary of Lismore Castle Arts, the historian and writer Robert O’Byrne gets to play in the castle’s galleries, with art by Monster Chetwynd, Steven Claydon, Dorothy Cross, John Gerrard, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Sarah Lucas, Alice Maher, Sasha Sykes, Joseph Walsh and Paloma Varga Weisz, and objects from all manner of extraordinary collections. They say the things we love show the world who we are. It should be fun to take a look.
Mainie Jellett & Evie Hone: The Art of Friendship
National Gallery, Dublin, April 10th to August 10th, nationalgallery.ie
Pioneers of modernism in Ireland, Evie Hone and Mainie Jellett went off to Paris in the 1920s to study with André Lhote, whose alumni also included Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Crozier and Tamara de Lempicka. Exploring how they added their own distinct, and distinctly Irish, voices to the themes and manners of modernism, the exhibition includes drawings, paintings and stained glass. On the subject of stained glass, look out for six of Harry Clarke’s stained-glass panels at the National Museum of Ireland’s Decorative Arts & History branch, at Collins Barracks in Dublin. Three of them are on temporary display while Crawford Art Gallery, in Cork, is closed for redevelopment. The exhibition, Harry Clarke’s Stained Glass, will run at the museum for at least two years. Back at the National Gallery, a collaboration with the Musée National Picasso-Paris, shows works from the cubist’s studio from October 11th, 2025, to February 22nd, 2026.
Kathy Prendergast & Chris Leach: Cities of the World
Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, August 9th to October 26th, butlergallery.ie
The Irish artist Kathy Prendergast and the British artist Chris Leach hadn’t met, but both have been fascinated by the shapes and textures of the world’s cities. Prendergast’s suite of 113 City Drawings, which began in 1992, maps cities in terms of the routes that allow us to get around. Elsewhere she has also made poignant maps based on those pinpricks of illumination that mark human habitation from high above or, as seen in Land, at the Douglas Hyde Gallery (until February 16th), through postcards and the emotional names of places in the gazetteers of maps and atlases. Leach, who began his Capital Cities project in 2012, has completed 196 tiny drawings of every recognised capital city in the world. Given our times of turmoil and flux, it is poignant to see how fragile and at risk many of these places actually are.
EVA International
Various venues, Limerick, August 29th to October 26th, eva.ie
Ireland’s art biennial goes from strength to strength – and gives a welcome invitation to see art on the streets and in pop-up venues that in 2025 will include Sadlier’s fishmongers, alongside such city stalwarts as Limerick City Gallery of Art and Ormston House, where a group show of four Irish artists weaves themes emerging from folklore and storytelling. Iarlaith Ní Fheorais and Roy Claire Potter have selected artists for the Platform Commissions series, while the Amsterdam-based Hungarian curator Eszter Szakács works with the EVA team to pull together an Irish and international roster of artists around the theme “It takes a village”. Social research and collaboration will be the order of the day, with new works by Yazan Khalili and Naeem Mohaiemen, and a major presentation by Ana Bravo-Peréz.
Jenny Brady: The Glass Booth
Project Arts Centre, Dublin, July to September, projectartscentre.ie
Jenny Brady’s international career has seen the always fascinating Irish artist explore ideas around speech and communication. The Glass Booth, her new experimental film work, has the potential to be particularly intriguing, as it looks at the work of language interpreters. First deployed at the Nuremberg Trials, simultaneous interpretation has direct connections with conflict resolution, bilingualism and the founding of the United Nations. Scope for misunderstandings abound as Brady looks at the work of interpreters and what may be lost or found in translation.
Andy Fitz
Visual, Carlow, September 20th to January 2026, visualcarlow.ie
Known for sculptures that breathe the uncanny into the everyday in a very tasty fashion, Andy Fitz will be making new work for Visual’s main space. Expect meticulously made figures, furniture and familiar objects that nonetheless dispense with the idea of a sleek veneer. Instead find all the scrappiness of humanity caught in motion, with installations that invite you in before delivering a kick to the uneasy margins with their ultimate inscrutability. Definitely worth a look; the companion exhibitions Naomi Sex and Anne Hardy will run simultaneously. Fascinatingly, Sex’s new film explores language and understanding – see also Jenny Brady at Project. Maybe understanding is all we really need for a happy new year.
Cecilia Vicuña
Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, November 6th, 2025, until July 2026, imma.ie
The poet, visual artist and activist Cecilia Vicuña has been in exile from her native Chile since the 1970s. Through site-specific installation, sculpture, film, sound art and performance, Vicuña looks at the enduring concerns of our world, from environmental destruction and human-rights abuses to the erosion of the cultural distinctions that give us our identities, even as we attempt to share our planet. A winner of multiple awards, including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 59th Venice Biennale, in 2022, Vicuña is the author of more than 30 volumes of art and poetry published globally. Among other good and interesting arty things, look out too for Art as Agency, featuring works from Imma’s extensive collections exploring where art and activism intersect. Launching in February 2025, it will run until January 2028.