Niamh Coffey: Siúnta

What to Expect

Siúnta takes its name from the Irish for a seam or a joint, and Niamh Coffey uses it to stitch together stories that were never meant to sit side by side. The exhibition draws on the Irish Folklore Commission’s Schools’ Collection of 1937 to 1939, the archive where primary school children wrote down the local history and lore of their own parishes. Coffey has gone looking in it for the tales of metamorphosis and blurred boundaries: hares that become milk-hungry witches, tadpoles swirling in boggy bellies, the moments where one kind of body turns into another.

From those accounts she makes drawings, then collages, manipulates and extends them before translating the results into textile work. The finished pieces are collaged narratives in cloth where, as the gallery puts it, forms of flesh, fur, flower and feather mingle and merge. The framing is queer ecology, which sets aside the idea of human exceptionalism and asks the viewer to reconsider what relationship we actually have with the rest of the living world. It is a show worth slowing down for: the source material is a century of ordinary rural memory and the objects made from it are dense with detail. Admission is free and it runs alongside Mags Duffy’s The Faraway Nearby in the neighbouring space.

Good to Know

• Runs Thursday 17 September 2026 to Saturday 10 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 free and no booking is needed
• Shows at the same time as Mags Duffy: The Faraway Nearby
• Phone 098 28735 or email info@customhousestudios.ie

Getting There

The gallery is on Westport Quay, about 1.5km from the Octagon and an easy flat twenty minute walk from the town centre along the Carrowbeg and Quay Road. Drivers arrive on the N5 from Castlebar and Dublin or the N59 from Galway through Leenane and from Newport and Achill to the north, with parking available at the harbour. Irish Rail runs from Dublin Heuston to Westport via Manulla Junction, and the station is about ten minutes on foot from the centre of town. Bus Eireann links Westport with Castlebar, Ballina, Galway and Achill. Cyclists finishing the Great Western Greenway come out close to the Quay.