Five must-see shows this Dublin Gallery Weekend – The Art Newspaper

Some of Dublin’s best artwork can be found down narrow alleyways and in overlooked neighbourhoods—fitting for a city defined by small, independent galleries. Founded in 2023 by the nascent Contemporary Art Gallery Association, Dublin Gallery Weekend connects these lesser-known spaces, sometimes unfamiliar even to Dubliners, with the city’s long-established art institutions. Running from 6–9 November, the 2025 programme promises “bold, experimental and unapologetic” work and features more than 100 artists across 20 venues throughout Ireland’s capital.

These are The Art Newspaper’s picks of the top shows shaping this year’s outing:

Cecilia Vicuña, Reverse Migration

Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Military Road, Kilmainham, Dublin, 7 November-5 July 2026

In a homage to a 2006 visit to Ireland, during which she and her partner honoured ancient sites, Cecilia Vicuña’s probing, poetic work examines how ecological collapse and memory interact. It is part ritual, part emergency broadcast.

Central to her oeuvre are quipus, a knotted system of writing used in the Andes more than 5,000 years ago. Vicuña’s practice includes performance, painting and installation, blending the political and personal. Aran Quipu (2025), one of her IMMA-specific works, looks at how ancestry and death are communicated and felt through references to Aran Island pattern-weaving traditions with a bone-like installation. “Right now, as human beings, we are threatening the possibility of the continuity of human life by destroying the ecosystems,” Vicuña tells The Art Newspaper, speaking from inside her Dublin quipu. “To be in a quipu that is like being inside bones, to me, is like a reminder of who we are”. Reverse Migration is the first Irish exhibition for the multi-award-winning artist.

Isabel Nolan, Look at the Harlequins! 

Kerlin Gallery, Anne’s Lane, South Anne Street, Dublin, until 22 November

Known for her lush, composed and philosophically charged works across painting, textiles and sculpture, Nolan’s Look at the Harlequins! takes its title from Vladimir Nabokov’s 1974 novel of the same name, where harlequins embody the idea that everything can be artifice and invention. Much of the series draws on the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, including The wolf who made a city tremble c.1216 (After Sassetta) (2023), an intricate wool rug that reimagines Sassetta’s The Wolf of Gubbio (1437–44). Nolan often draws out small, overlooked details from historical art to explore how images, and the meanings we attach to them, change over time. She will represent Ireland at the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026.​

Alan Butler: Assets

Green on Red, Park Lane, Spencer Dock, Dublin, until 12 December

Digital culture is a raw material for Alan Butler, who explores how artificial intelligence, databases and software transmit meaning by repurposing everything from computer-graphics to in-jokes and live location trackers into playful installations. His self-aware works seem like Rube Goldberg machines for the data age, but without cartoonish waste. Assets typifies his recursive, scenic-route approach: in Thanatophone (2025), live satellite data from the world’s hottest places is converted into sound and beamed directly into visitors’ heads as they pass, while Ghost Mussels (2025) features mussel-like forms 3D-printed from plastic derived from the sea creatures themselves. “I’m never trying to educate or anything like that!” Butler tells The Art Newspaper, speaking about his dialectically inspired processes, “I’m using these routes of modality to produce artwork”.

Kwaidan – Encounters with Lafcadio Hearn

SO Fine Art Editions, 2nd Floor, Powerscourt Centre, 59 South William Street, Dublin, 7-28 November

Faceless shapeshifters and floating goblin heads haunt works in this group show, in which 20 Japanese and 20 Irish-based artists respond to Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904), a collection of ghost tales by Ireland-raised writer Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904), also known as Koizumi Yakumo. Blending Japanese folklore with Western literary style, the book helped introduce Japan’s ghost story tradition to global readers. Among the responses, Mujina (2025) an ink etching by Yoko Akino, a Japanese-born artist based in Dublin, depicts the same-named legendary sprite that sometimes takes the form of a beautiful but faceless woman. Akino draws on the ukiyo-e tradition, a style that flourished in Japan’s Edo period and was later romanticised in the West through Japonisme and influential to the Impressionists. The work is personal to Akino who grew up with tales of the shapeshifters. “When I was in primary school, stories about Mujina, taking the form of humans and tricking people—that was quite popular. I know that story quite well,” she tells The Art Newspaper.

Caroline Mac Cathmhaoil: Aer Milam

Pallas Projects, 115-116 The Coombe, The Liberties, Dublin, 7-22 November

Mac Cathmhaoil is known for their bold, experimental practice that satirises power and questions systems of control, often using self-built installations as both a medium and message. Merkel Machine (2021), a pair of enormous eyes inspired by Angela Merkel’s famous eye-roll at Vladimir Putin, brought international attention. In Aer Milam, they apply a queer and feminist lens to push their commentary into metaphysical territory, combining circuitry, moving image and recycled materials and to explore death through the aesthetics of air travel. Cosmic Runway / Departure Zone (2024) looks like a lit-up night-time runway made from LEDs, wires and electronics. The exhibition invites viewers to imagine taking off and draws links between aviation paths and lucid dreaming.

• Dublin Gallery Weekend, various locations, Dublin, 7–9 November