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arts · Saturday 17 October 2026 · Various 
The Dark Seam - Blawnin Clancy
At Ballina Arts Centre · Barrett Street, Ballina, Co. Mayo
At Ballina Arts Centre · Barrett Street, Ballina, Co. Mayo
The Dark Seam is a painting exhibition about identity, memory and inherited experience as they surface through the Irish landscape. Blawnin Clancy works with buried histories and with trauma that passes down through generations, drawing on the idea of post-memory: the way migration, loss and return get transmitted to people who did not live through the original events.
The paintings themselves take the Atlantic coastline as their subject, treating it as a threshold that is simultaneously a point of departure and a point of arrival. That double reading is the seam of the title. Clancy’s approach is informed by landscape writing theory, and the aim of the show is to surface the geographic, emotional and historical layers that shape how any of us experience a place. In a north Mayo town where emigration is part of nearly every family’s history, the subject lands close to home. The exhibition runs at the same time as Anna Spearman’s New Work in the same building, and both are free to visit.
Ballina Arts Centre is on Barrett Street in the town centre, close to the River Moy. Drive in on the N26 from Swinford and Foxford, the N59 from Sligo, or the N57 from Castlebar via Foxford. Irish Rail runs the Ballina branch line with connections at Manulla Junction for Dublin Heuston and Westport. Bus Eireann serves Ballina from Castlebar, Sligo, Galway and Dublin, and Local Link buses cover Killala, Ballycastle and the surrounding villages. There is on-street parking nearby and public car parks a few minutes’ walk from the arts centre.
Heading to Ballina Arts Centre in Ballina? Mayo has plenty more to see. Read the Ballina area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.