Overview
126 Artist-Run Gallery & Studios is proud to present Herd, a group exhibition of emerging artists from across the country. The exhibition includes a range of diverse sculptural works and photography, with unique responses to the question: how can we experience solidarity in the age of the solitary?
The works within Herd invite the viewer to examine their capacity for empathy in a time where individualistic pursuits are so highly valued. As the digital sphere expands to become an omnipresent influence in our lives, these works take a moment to reflect on the fading distinction between the real world and an online one, and the desensitising effect of a constant cycle of consumption.
Natural forms, soft colour palettes, and techniques that encourage slow making provide a gentle access point to heavy themes such as the portrayal of death in the media, human intervention, disconnection from land, and the performance of connection in the digital age.
Herd speaks to our inherent desire for community, despite the forces of division at play, and highlights, in this current climate, that determined empathy is our most prized asset.
Curated by Yana Nungesser.
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Featured Artists
Laurence Hynes
Laurence Hynes is an Irish visual artist who works primarily in the medium of photography. His practice is concerned with landscape, place, and the human relationship with the Earth.
Projects include ‘This present earth’ (2023) and ‘Roam’ (2021 – 2022), both in the Maumturk mountain range in western Ireland, and ‘What might be left standing’ (2025) at sites of historic piers around Galway Bay. His publication Made by nature to decay was selected for the 2024 Dublin Art Book Fair. A debut solo exhibition, ‘What might be left standing’ took place in the University of Galway Gallery in 2025.
He holds an MA in Creative Practice, with First Class Honours, from the Atlantic Technological University, was awarded the ATU Radius Project Bursary in 2022, and was the recipient of an Arts Council of Ireland Agility Award in 2023. He won the Source New Writing Prize in 2025.
In 2025 he won a Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship, awarded by Research Ireland, to undertake a PhD in the Centre for Irish Studies, University of Galway, under the supervision of Dr. Nessa Cronin. His doctoral research is on Tim Robinson’s cartographic work in the west of Ireland.
Luke Donnelly
Luke Donnelly is a visual artist and researcher based in Co.Galway. They received their B.A through Printmaking and Contemporary Practice from Limerick School of Art and Design in 2016 and MFA from the National College of Art and Design in 2026. They are an orbital member of Engage Art Studios and have been a recipient of the Arts Council Agility Award 2023 and the Galway Arts Centre + Galway Culture Company Bursary 24. Their work finds form through drawing, photography, scanography, text, video and sculpture.
Murrough O’Donovan
Murrough O’Donovan is an emerging Irish sculptor based between West Cork, Ireland and London, with a practice focusing on exploring ecological issues, how we conceptualise land, ritual practice and mythological archetypes through sculpture and installation. He had his second solo exhibition Navigating the Forest, The Fallen Branches of the Somme Oak in April 2026 and exhibited work in the 196th Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition. In 2025 he received the Arts Council of Ireland Agility Award and had his first solo exhibition Reach Out, Pull Me Closer in Backwater Artist’s Studio 12 gallery. O’Donovan is currently studying an MA in Sculpture at The Royal College of Art in London for which he received the President and Vice-Chancellor’s UK Scholarship, the Leverhulme Arts Scholarship and the Liu Shiming Art Foundation Bursary.
Sophie Hanna Hayes
Sophie Hanna Hayes is a Dublin and Westmeath based visual artist and printmaker. She works in a variety of print mediums, textiles and mixed media. She has an interest in the combination of language and imagery, with her work often incorporating the written word. She is interested in bookmaking, words and birds.
Tanya Chakálova
Tanya Chakálova is a Ukrainian multidisciplinary artist based in Tuam. She completed a BA (Hons) in Art at Atlantic Technological University in 2026. Working across painting, printmaking, photography and installation, her practice explores memory, trauma and identity through material and process. Her work is shaped by an interest in human experience and in creating spaces for reflection, shifting between individual and collective perspectives.
