EXHIBITION (launch from 6pm): Still, We Gather brings together artists working across a wide range of mediums to celebrate the social and political potential of coming together, recognising gathering as a practice of care, joy, protest and collective imagination.

Developed through an open call, the exhibition brings together a constellation of contemporary Irish artists whose practices emerge from layered geographies and diverse lived experiences and whose works explore how forms of connection and resistance are sustained and reimagined across borders, cultures and times. Solidarity as both method and theme threads through the exhibition, with many works developed through collaborations, collectives, and socially engaged projects that foreground processes of shared authorship, dialogue, and co-creation. Drawing from indigenous knowledge systems, memory work, collaborative research, and participatory methodologies, artworks across the exhibition inquire into how culture, land, and language are carried forward or lost, how communities sustain connection in a moment marked by deepening political tensions, and how gentle acts of collective care can counter fragmentation.

Reflections on the erosion of ecologies and languages, the fragility of social infrastructures, such as housing and care, and the deepening uncertainty facing younger generations frame Ireland’s present within international histories of struggle and resistance.

Still, We Gather invites a deeper engagement with the political, social, and environmental forces that shape this moment, highlighting the ways artists continue to pose alternatives to persistent cycles of extraction, displacement and forgetting by creating space for how we might imagine and build different futures together.

AFTERPARTY (from 8pm): Taking place at Club Áras na nGael, with sets from LoveSmoke and Kelsey,  Admission via Galway Arts Centre. 8pm – late. RSVP is essential.

DJ duo LoveSmoke deliver energising sets with Afrocentric and global sounds, expect Latin house, disco house, Afro House/Tech & more!

Kelsey is a Galway based DJ and party starter who has ignited dancefloors from Vietnam to Portugal, Dublin to Galway. She co-founded the @teighsios collective, curating inclusive, multi-disciplinary events that give DJs space to explore their sound. A staple on the festival scene she has played at Beyond The Pale, All Together Now, Electric Picnic, Boomtown and more. Kelsey’s sets are a vibrant fusion of global sounds, techy rollers, and baile and dembow riddims, all wrapped in bass-driven beauty.

Expect melodic and soulful rhythms in a warm, expansive celebration!

Photo: Calling the Bird Ancestors (2025), Dervla Baker, Marilyn Lennon & Andy Ingamells

For more information on these events, see www.galwayartscentre.ie.