TO LAND: Living Roots Awaken
23 May – 9 August 2026
Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, County Louth
Crawford Art Gallery and Highlanes Gallery proudly present a new strategic touring partnership, To Land: Living Roots Awaken, in collaboration with the Artist-Teacher-Researcher Curatorial Group.
Drawing from the rich collection of Crawford Art Gallery’s contemporary artworks, the exhibition explores how identity is shaped by our relationship with land, history, and memory. We are an island formed by rupture and renewal, rooted in ancient cultures yet continually re-forming in the wake of colonisation. The exhibition conveys the persistence oof history in the present, while themes of displacement and the urge to put down roots resonate quietly throughout the selected artworks.
Bringing together painting, printmaking, textile, drawing, ceramics, and sculpture, the exhibition considers our connection to nature and asks how we relate to the world around us.
To Land: Living Roots Awaken features artworks from Crawford Art Gallery’s collection by Karen Conway, Barrie Cooke, Dorothy Cross, Stephen Doyle, Anthony Haughey, Katie Holten, John Keating, Fiona Kelly, Anne Kiely and Mary Palmer, Elizabeth Magill, Alice Maher, Frieda Meaney, Nuala O’Donovan, and John Rainey. The exhibition also features the work of invited artists Dorota Borowa, Tom Climent, James Hayes, and Ciara O’Connor.
The Artist-Teacher-Researcher (ATR) Curatorial Group are Eileen Brennan, Kieran Gallagher, Bairbre Geraghty, Veronica Lavin, Roisin O’Sullivan, and Ciaran Power.
To Land: Living Roots Awaken opens at 3pm on Saturday 23 May 2026. Admission is free and the exhibition is supported by a programme of talks, tours, and workshops. See www.highlanes.ie for further information.
Crawford Art Gallery wishes to thank Aoife Ruane, Stephen Hodgins, Simon Colfer, and the Highlanes Gallery team.
Featured artworks:
CEILIÚRADH: Treasures of the Boyne Valley
8 May – 2 August 2026
Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, County Louth
Crawford Art Gallery is delighted to loan a painting by Drogheda-born artist Nathaniel Hill (1861-1930) to Highlanes Gallery for Ceiliúradh: Treasures of the Boyne Valley.
Marking the twentieth anniversary of Highlanes Gallery, home of the Drogheda Municipal Art Collection, the exhibition is inspired by the Boyne Valley and draws attention to the built environment, rurality, richness of nature, and ideas around climate change/action and sustainability.
Goose Girl in a Breton Farmyard (1884) was painted by Nathaniel Hill during a period the artist spent in Brittany with fellow Irishmen, Roderic O’Conor (1860-1940) and Walter Osborne (1859-1903), following their studies in Antwerp. Typical of his Realist style, Hill depicts the courtyard of La Ferme de Keranperchec at Pont-Aven in this small canvas, presenting a rural peasant scene which made for popular subject matter at that time.
Crawford Art Gallery wishes to thank Aoife Ruane, Stephen Hodgins, Simon Colfer, and the Highlanes Gallery team.
The exhibition coincides with To Land: Living Roots Awaken (23 May – 9 August 2026), a strategic touring partnership between Crawford Art Gallery and Highlanes Gallery, in collaboration with the Artist-Teacher-Researcher Curatorial Group.
Featured artwork:
CONSTELLATIONS: Selected Work from Crawford Art Gallery
14 February – 2 May 2026
F.E. McWilliam Gallery, Banbridge, County Down
We are delighted to collaborate with F.E. McWilliam Gallery on a new exhibition of contemporary Irish art.
Constellations: Selected Work from Crawford Art Gallery brings artworks from the collection to the F.E. McWilliam Gallery in Northern Ireland.
Featuring the work of 14 artists based on the island of Ireland, Constellations highlights the depth and richness of Crawford Art Gallery’s contemporary holdings within Ireland’s National Collection.
Linked by the artists’ use of bold colour and shared themes of nature, domestic life and identity, the artworks in this exhibition range from film and photography to drawing, painting, and sculpture. Several of these were acquired by Crawford Art Gallery during the COVID-19 lockdowns as part of the Government of Ireland’s investment in visual artists and the National Collection. All made within the past 21 years, a number of these are also multi-part works and reflect key moments within their respective artists’ practices.
Constellations is the latest instalment in an ongoing cross-border relationship between F.E. McWilliam Gallery and Crawford Art Gallery, which began in 2013.
The exhibition features the work of Aideen Barry, Declan Byrne, Tom Climent, Amanda Coogan, Laura Fitzgerald, Michael Hanna, Katie Holten, Ronnie Hughes, Dragana Jurišić, Nick Miller, Isabel Nolan, Niamh Swanton, Jennifer Trouton, and Corban Walker.
Crawford Art Gallery wishes to thank Riann Coulter and the F.E. McWilliam Gallery team in realising such an energising and hopeful exhibition.
Constellations: Selected Work from Crawford Art Gallery opens from 3pm Saturday 14 February and runs until Saturday 2 May. F.E. McWilliam Gallery is open weekly, Monday-Saturday, and admission is free.
Featured artworks: