Autumn / Winter Season 2026

VISUAL is pleased to announce its Autumn / Winter 2026 season, featuring solo exhibitions of newly commissioned and existing work by Niamh O'Malley, Peter Pearson, Orla O'Byrne, Agnès Varda and Mary Cullen Kelly.

Opening Saturday 26 September, 3 - 5:30pm, all welcome.

The work in this season is linked by an exploration of the memory, experience and legacy embedded in the built environment.

Niamh O'Malley's Pure Gold presents new sculpture, drawing and film made in response to the material and site of Dublin's Irish Life Centre, a modernist office-block and apartment complex that caught the public imagination during its construction in the 1970s - in part because of its golden facades. The original ‘solar shield’ windows, made by laminating a thin film of gold between layers of glass, are now gradually being replaced by new high-performance glazing. O'Malley repurposes the original material into a series of functional, modular standard lamps and large-scale installations, revealing the mutability and allure of this light refracting and absorbing glass. These are accompanied by new drawings and a film made in the artist's studio at the Irish Life Centre, capturing reflections, doubling and mirroring in an ever-changing site.

Peter Pearson been working as an artist, writer, historian and collector for over 50 years. Fragments brings together related strands of Pearson’s work; as a painter of scenes of urban dereliction, often with a surreal and polemical approach, and his practice of collecting architectural salvage from demolished, derelict and threatened buildings since the 1970s. Beginning at a time when the rich architectural fabric of Ireland, and particularly Dublin, was being destroyed by developers and enabled by government, Pearson now holds an invaluable record of Irish craftsmanship and making skill. Fragments highlights both Pearson's dedication to celebrating and sharing these skills, and the beauty inherent in building and decorative craft of the past.

Found in Collection by Orla O'Byrne brings together photography, sculpture, drawing and moving image in an installation that works with the materials and histories of several disparate sites; the Crawford Gallery of Art and St. Finbarre's Cathedral, Cork; the marble quarry of Carrara, and the Bay of Biscay as seen in a glass lantern slide. Focusing on quieter or undiscovered corners, O'Byrne uncovers different ways of marking and excavating time both geological and human.

Agnès Varda spent the majority of her life living and working on Rue Daguerre in Paris. In 1976, Varda was reluctant to travel far from home while caring for her young son, and so turned to her friends, neighbours and shopkeepers to make a portrait of people and place in Daguerreotypes. The film's on-site street filming captures Rue Daguerre as a microcosm of society. This was enabled by the installation of the maximum length of the cabling available to power Varda’s equipment, which meant that the entire production took place within 90 metres of her apartment. 

Temporary Vacation by Mary Cullen Kelly, marks the opening of our new exhibition space. The Theatre Gallery is dedicated to showcasing the breadth of artistic talent connected to Carlow. Mary Cullen Kelly makes delicate, intricate paintings concerned with the textures and moods of hidden corners. These spaces are captured in oil paint, reproduced from photographs taken in the course of everyday events, made strange and surreal through Cullen Kelly's eyes.