Mags Duffy: The Faraway Nearby

What to Expect

The Faraway Nearby is a body of paintings about remembered childhood geography and the stories that gather around a river running through the artist’s hometown. Mags Duffy is interested in how a story becomes something else in the retelling, and the work sits deliberately between what happened and what was imagined afterwards.

Local folklore feeds directly into the paintings, in particular the legend of Pollagh na gCapaill, a sinkhole said to be bottomless and to be the place a mythical water horse comes up from. Other fragments recur across the canvases: gold in the riverbed, Bamboo Island, the Red Bridge, all threaded together by the river’s course. The making is slow and physical. Duffy builds up layers of paint and wax, then digs back into earlier layers by scratching, scraping and sanding, so the surface itself carries a history of what was covered over. She works on several paintings at once, which lets narratives and moods bleed between them. The title comes from Rebecca Solnit’s book, and the show borrows Solnit’s question about how a distorted memory of a place can become an entirely different place in the retelling.

Good to Know

• Runs Thursday 17 September to Saturday 17 October 2026
• Custom House Studios + Gallery, The Quay, Westport
• Gallery hours: Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm, weekends and bank holidays 1pm to 4.30pm
• Admission is not listed online - phone 098 28735 or email info@customhousestudios.ie
• Technique: layered paint and wax, excavated by scratching, scraping and sanding
• Shown alongside Niamh Coffey’s Siunta, which runs to 10 October
• The Na Cailleacha group exhibition follows in the same gallery from 28 October

Getting There

Custom House Studios is on The Quay in Westport, roughly 2km west of the Octagon along the R335 to Louisburgh. It is a straightforward walk or cycle from the town centre, and the Great Western Greenway runs close by. Drivers reach Westport on the N5 from Castlebar and Dublin or the N59 from Newport, Achill and Clifden. Irish Rail runs direct trains from Dublin Heuston to Westport via Manulla Junction. Bus Eireann and Local Link serve the town, with a local bus down to the Quay, and there is public parking along the Quay.