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arts · Saturday 22 August 2026 · Various 
Picturing the Border: 1921 - 2026 at Highlanes Gallery
At Highlanes Gallery · 36 Saint Laurence Street, Drogheda, Co. Louth, A92 F7PH
At Highlanes Gallery · 36 Saint Laurence Street, Drogheda, Co. Louth, A92 F7PH
Picturing the Border gathers work in painting, print, photography, film and popular culture that responds to the Irish border in the century since partition. Curated by Dr Orla Fitzpatrick and Aoife Ruane, it brings together up to ten invited artists alongside pieces borrowed from public and private collections on both sides of the line. Willie Doherty’s A Fork in the Road is among the works on show.
The curators set out to move past the stock imagery of watchtowers and checkpoints and look instead at the communities living along the border and the very different ways division played out from Donegal to Louth. Highlanes has a direct claim on the subject: the gallery was set up 20 years ago with funding tied to Drogheda’s border-county status and the pressures the town faced during and after the Troubles. The exhibition runs for ten weeks and sits alongside the Young Creatives Art Competition in the gallery’s 20th anniversary year.
Highlanes Gallery occupies a converted Franciscan friary church at 36 Saint Laurence Street, on the main pedestrian street in Drogheda town centre, a minute from the Tholsel. Drivers should leave the M1 at junction 9 or 10 and follow the town centre signs. The gallery points visitors towards on-street parking or the Laurence Shopping Centre car park a short walk away, with Scotch Hall across the river as an alternative. Drogheda MacBride railway station is about 15 minutes on foot, with Dublin and Belfast trains, and Bus Éireann and Matthews coaches stop on the Dublin Road and at the Donore Road bus station.
Heading to Highlanes Gallery in Drogheda? Louth has plenty more to see. Read the Drogheda area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.