Custom House Studios + Gallery & Mayo College of Further Education, Westport Campus, cordially invite you to the official opening reception for the Mayo College of Further Education, Art Level 6 2026, End of Year Exhibition. Official Opening by Sinead Wall Printmaker and Visual Arts Teacher @ MSLETB, Westport Campus.
ART LEVEL 6 & MAYO COLLEGE OF FURTHER EDUCATION
Exhibiting Artists include: Klym Bohatyrov | Ella Conway | Laura Coughlin | Luca Doran | Liudmila Haidukova | Áine McFadden | Lily McGinley | Thomas Murphy | Sinead Murray | Francesca Scott | Orla Sloyan | Jurate Tighe | Louise Wilde | Amelia Wrobel
Our Level 6 Art course is designed to enable the students to acquire the skills and methods used by professional artists. We have chosen the modules that are the most relevant to a successful career in art and design. The course offers an enriching combination of art modules: Painting, Drawing, Combined Materials, Printmaking, Fine Art Photography and the History and Appreciation of Art and Design alongside the beneficial modules of Work Experience and Communications.
Mayo College of Further Education offers a fresh and vibrant place to study and with the aim of ensuring accessible lifelong learning opportunities for all. Students on PLC courses may receive Level 5 or Level 6 awards which are nationally recognised and which are a stepping stone to further study or training. While many of our students go directly into the world of work, increasing numbers progress to higher educational opportunities.
Custom House Studios cordially invites you to the official opening reception for Tanawin, a solo exhibition by artist Vivian Hansbury, on Thursday 16th April @6pm. Guest speaker | Dr. Lucy Hill, Artist and Assistant Professor Art Education, DCU.
My work delves into the intricate dynamics of our connection to the world, both physically and socially. It also explores the elusive nature of memory and the fluidity of recollection. My art journeys through a realm of emotion, exploring the mythic and symbolic significance of bogs and peatlands.
For me, the bog becomes a symbol of submerged memories and experiences buried deep within the unconscious. I am repeatedly drawn to the imagery of the bog landscape from my childhood, a place that holds a profound emotional tie and a sense of not belonging.
My current work relates to experiences growing up in the midlands near the bogs in County Offaly; there were few, if any, reference points for my bi-racial identity. My extended drawings are the embodiment of memories and experiences, inextricably aligned with the physical and cultural landscape of the boglands. I am creating site-specific installation works that are informed by their surroundings.
And by allowing it to occupy different environments, the relationship between object and space offers new meaning by creating new narrative possibilities for the viewer.
Exhibition continues until Sunday 24th May, 2026.
Custom House Studios + Gallery cordially invites you to the official opening reception of InHouse 26, a Custom House Studios Artist’s Group Exhibition. Exhibiting artists include Breda Burns | Mags Duffy | Ralph Gelbert | Pauline Garavan | Imelda Kilbane | Hetty Lawlor | Christine Prescott | Betsy Stirratt | Ian Wieczorek | Sarah Wren Wilson | Genevieve King | Ann Conmy
Official opening Thursday 16th April, 6pm – 8pm, guest speaker Denise Mc Donagh, Producer, artist, media literacy & arts education practitioner.
Custom House Studios + Gallery in Westport is delighted to present a group exhibition highlighting the diverse range of work created by its resident artists. Titled InHouse 26, this 2026 workspace exhibition features twelve artists who have developed and produced work in the studios over the past year.
Custom House Studios + Gallery cordially invite you to the official opening reception of ‘Pilgrim’, a solo exhibition by artist Susan Mannion. Opening Thursday 5th March @6pm – 8pm, exhibition continues until Saturday 11th April, 2026.
Pilgrim is an exhibition of work by Susan Mannion, an Irish artist and curator specialising in enamelled metalwork and printmaking. In Pilgrim, Susan explores the profound human impulse to seek out sacred places near to water, where the entwining of place and story occurs. Drawing on her background as an archaeologist, this body of work examines the physical and spiritual layers of the Irish waterscape—from the ancient dark bog pools and wells of Roscommon, along the rivers and to the sea at Westport in Clew Bay, where a Pilgrim’s journey comes to an end.
Susan Mannion has exhibited in 12 solo and several group exhibitions. Her work is held in private, public, national and international collections. Susan has won commissions, including the Wild Nephin National Park and Roscommon County Council awards. Susan won the Merrion Plinth Award 2022 and travelled to Japan to receive a prestigious award from the Japan Enamel Artists Association.
Custom House Studios + Gallery cordially invites you to the official opening reception for A Tenuous Line, a sole exhibition by artist Niamh McGuinne on Thursday, 5th March at 6pm – 8pm.
A Tenuous Line is a multimedia exhibition presented in the upstairs gallery by Niamh McGuinne, a Dublin-based visual artist whose practice combines print, sculpture, film and installation. Her work investigates the formulations of middens, accumulations of discarded material, and historical rubbish heaps. There are 77 midden sites situated in Mayo, eighteen of which are sheltered in Clew Bay, typically containing shells, bones and other such remnants of survival. They are read as sites of temporary occupation, holding traces of movement and diets. This tenuous line is not a line drawn on a map. It is a line drawn around resources, around bodies, around access.
Niamh McGuinne has had many solo shows, including Carapa’ (2023), Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda and Sojourn (2024), Rathfarnham Castle. She is a member of Shell/Ter Artist Collective, who together have exhibited in the National Gallery of Ireland (2022), Draiocht (2022), Limerick City Art Gallery (2023) and GOMA Waterford (2024). As a member of MIDDEN collective, she has exhibited in Lumen Gallery, London (2021), Takt Berlin (2022), the Luan Gallery, Athlone (2022) and upcoming QSS Belfast in June 2026.
Thread Softly a solo exhibition by Daniel Chester opens Friday January 23rd at the Custom House Studios + Gallery Friday.
Thread Softly is a solo exhibition of paintings by Daniel Chester, focusing on the ecology of the rural Irish landscape. In this body of work, Chester delicately captures the subtle interplay between land, water, and sky, revealing the hidden networks and quiet vitality of Ireland’s countryside. His brushwork and palette evoke both the resilience and fragility of native flora, shifting weather, and the ever-present traces of human touch.
Chester invites viewers to consider the interconnectedness of all living things within these landscapes. “Thread Softly” becomes both a gentle admonition and an invitation: to look more closely, to tread with care, and to reflect on our relationship with the land that sustains us.
This exhibition offers a contemplative journey through fields, bogs, hedgerows, and meadows—spaces where art, ecology, and memory intertwine.
Daniel Chester is a visual artist living in County Leitrim. He obtained a Masters Degree in Visual Arts Practices from IADT in 2009, previous to that he obtained a Degree in Fine Art from Sligo IT in 2001. Chester has exhibited throughout Ireland and abroad, with a number of recent solo and group shows including Beyond the Stile, SolartGallery; The Land is Ours, Luan Gallery, Athlone; Beyond the Plains, Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon; The Ethereal Space, Hamilton Gallery, Sligo; Identity, Westival Westport, Co Mayo and Seeing is Believing, Sol Art Gallery, Dublin.
Thread Softly will be officially launched on Friday January 23rd at 6pm in the Custom House Studios + Gallery. Exhibition continues to March 1st.
www.danielchesterartist.com
Upstairs Gallery | Carrowbeg Artists
The Carrowbeg Artists are a group of artists with intellectual disability who have been creating together for over 16 years in the Custom House Studios + Gallery facilitated by artists Breda Burns, Caroline Masterson, and Gráinne O’Reilly. The group has a remarkable legacy of projects already produced with the support of Mayo County Council Arts Service Upstart award, the MSLETB as well as the Arts Council and Pobal.
Exhibiting Artists Ellen Cafferkey | Sarah Kelly | Trish Kelly | Anna Rose Lowry | Máire Maguire | Gerry O’Malley | Elsa Jenny Rochford
Share :
