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arts · Saturday 8 August 2026 · Various 
Oisín Tozer: In the Pale Light of a Shadow
At Ballina Arts Centre · Barrett Street, Ballina, Co. Mayo, F26 NW83
At Ballina Arts Centre · Barrett Street, Ballina, Co. Mayo, F26 NW83
Oisín Tozer has made In the Pale Light of a Shadow for the gallery it hangs in. It is a site-responsive installation of visually spare, interconnected works, and it takes local Ballina ecology as its starting point before pulling in philosophical and art-historical reference. The show is about perception as much as it is about landscape: what we notice, what we edit out, and how much of the natural world we only ever see through our own frame.
The pieces are deliberately quiet. Tozer works through imagery, subtle gesture and small interventions in the space rather than through big statements, and the exhibition questions the binaries we draw between nature and culture. The arts centre describes the result as oblique reflections on nature, materiality, time and the human shadows cast on land, which is a fair warning that this is a show to walk around slowly rather than photograph and leave. It shares the building with Val McLoughlin’s Quarters, a painting show drawn from the banks of the River Moy a few hundred metres away, and the two make a good pairing on a single visit. Admission is free throughout the run.
Ballina Arts Centre is on Barrett Street in the town centre, a couple of minutes’ walk from the bridge over the Moy and the main shopping streets. By road, the N26 runs up from Swinford and Foxford, the N58 comes from Castlebar and Foxford, and the N59 arrives from Crossmolina to the west and Sligo to the east. Irish Rail runs services from Dublin Heuston to Ballina via Manulla Junction, with the station about ten minutes on foot from Barrett Street. Bus Eireann connects Ballina with Castlebar, Sligo, Galway and Dublin. There is pay-and-display street parking nearby and larger car parks within a short walk.
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.