Art in the Park V

Art in the Park V brought together nine artists across Swan Park in Buncrana, transforming the public space into an open-air gallery. The exhibition invited visitors to explore artworks that engaged with themes such as ecology and land use, migration, memory, belonging, walking as an artistic practice, colonial histories, and the creative reuse of everyday materials. These ideas came together under a shared theme, At the Threshold.

For this edition of Art in the Park, the history and landscape of the Inishowen peninsula provided a key source of inspiration. Located at the edge of the Atlantic, Inishowen had long been shaped by movement—of people, power, and ideas. Its coastal position made it strategically important, particularly in controlling access through Lough Swilly, with sites such as Fort Dunree and Ned’s Point reflecting this history.

At the time, although Inishowen was part of the Republic of Ireland, it remained closely connected to Derry, highlighting its identity as a border region shaped by overlapping political, cultural, and social influences.

The theme At the Threshold looked at Inishowen not just as a place, but as a condition. A threshold was a point of transition—a space where things met, changed, or were negotiated. It could be physical, like a border or coastline, but also social or personal: a moment of waiting, crossing, or transformation.

In this sense, Inishowen could be understood as a place shaped by questions of access, permission, and belonging. It was where public and private interests intersected, sometimes in tension, and where movement could be welcomed, delayed, or restricted.

Thinking about thresholds helped visitors reflect on how people moved through the world and how their experiences were shaped by larger forces—political, environmental, and social. Thresholds were moments when the familiar could feel uncertain, and when meanings began to shift.

They were also connected to the idea of being at the edge. At the edge, perspectives could change: what people saw and understood could feel unstable or unfamiliar. The horizon—always just out of reach—reminded visitors that their point of view was never fixed.

In those in-between spaces, reality and imagination could overlap. Thresholds heightened awareness, bringing attention to moments of change and possibility. They invited people to consider how they responded to uncertainty, and how new ways of thinking and being could emerge.

Ireland itself sat at the western edge of Europe, and Inishowen at the north-west edge of Ireland. This layered geography gave the peninsula a strong sense of being “in between”—between places, histories, and identities.

Within this context, the nine artists in Art in the Park 2026 explored the idea of the threshold from ecological, emotional, political, historical, and spatial perspectives. Their works approached the threshold as a liminal space—a zone of transition where meaning was open and evolving.

Each artwork could be experienced individually, but together they offered a wider reflection on how thresholds shaped both landscapes and lives. Through installations, photography, sound, and sculpture, the artists invited visitors to pause, reflect, cross, return, and see the park in new ways.

Annie Hogg | LOST: delineations

In LOST: delineations, Annie Hogg responds to a landscape that has crossed a painful threshold: the shift from traditional hedgerow systems to industrial-scale farming. Using sculptural elements and a soundscape by Natalia Beylis, Hogg reflects on solastalgia — the distress caused when familiar environments are irrevocably changed. Materials collected from the transformed site—charred, ground, and reconfigured—hold the grief of what has been lost.

Jessica Auer | When I Walk

Jessica Auer’s When I Walk is a choreographed journey through Swan Park. Large-scale photographic panels and fragments of text form a walking route.

Santiago Vélez | Doors to the Sea

In Doors to the Sea, Santiago Vélez places symbolic doors directly into oceans across the world — from the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Urabá and the Florida Strait. These poetic interventions address the absurdity of attempting to “close” the sea through border policies, even as thousands of migrants risk their lives crossing it. The sea becomes a threshold charged with danger, longing, and political control. Vélez exposes borders that are both porous and violently enforced and invites us to reconsider what it means to cross into safety, dignity, or hope.

Gail Ritchie | Home for Ghosts & Letting Go

Gail Ritchie’s works explore the home as a threshold between safety and fear, memory and forgetting. In Home for Ghosts, familiar domestic elements give way to an uncanny chamber and an upside-down chair “for the ghost,” reflecting her lived experience of growing up during the Troubles, when simply opening the door could be an act shaped by fear. Letting Go emerges from a personal bereavement, tracing a passage from the home to the sea and the difficult work of release. Together, these works explore emotional thresholds we cross repeatedly — between presence and absence, holding on and letting go.

Sue Morris | Commons

Sue Morris explores shared land, shared histories, and shared futures. Text in Irish, English, and Punjabi reflects her family’s multicultural identity and the intertwined legacies of Ireland, India, and British imperialism. Commons challenges nationalist narratives and anti-migrant rhetoric by reclaiming public space as a site of inclusivity. Rather than marking territory or allegiance, Morris’s plaques and flags celebrate community and belonging. 

Rosalind Lowry | Private Land

Installed inside The Jug, a historic holding cell once used to confine sailors, Private Land examines the growing enclosure and commodification of the Irish landscape. Lowry creates temporary porcelain interventions that are installed, photographed, and removed — becoming memorials to land on the brink of change or destruction. Inside The Jug, the fragility of the porcelain contrasts with the heavy walls of confinement, highlighting questions of access, ownership, and control. The work asks viewers to consider land as something shared, remembered, and cared for — not simply owned or exploited.

Darcy Patterson | Which Once Was

In Which Once Was, Darcy Patterson reconfigures discarded wooden doors into delicate self-supporting sculptures. Once reliant on frames and hinges, the doors now hold each other upright through balance and collaboration. The familiar becomes unfamiliar, revealing new forms of interdependence. Patterson’s work asks us to reconsider everyday objects and the thresholds they create — physical, social, and emotional — suggesting that transformation becomes possible when rigid structures loosen, and when bodies or ideas lean on one another rather than stand alone.

Roberto Uribe-Castro | Abyss

Abyss is a water mirror installed within the ruins of O’Doherty’s Keep. Using water drawn from the Crana River, Roberto Uribe-Castro transforms the tower’s hollow interior into a reflective surface that recreates the vanished floors and staircases once contained within its stone walls. The mirrored image appears fragmented and partially inaccessible, visible only through openings in the tower and across the water’s surface. Engaging themes of attraction, danger, and perception, the work evokes the myth of Narcissus, presenting reflection as both seductive and disorienting. Abyss asks viewers to consider their relationship to the space: observer, observed, or somewhere between both.

Locky Morris | Floaters

Floaters is an installation made from footballs found on beaches and riverbanks across the north west of Ireland. Some were lost years ago, others more recently, carried by water far from where they were once used. Locky has collected these footballs over time, reshaping them and placing them behind glass so they appear paused and held in place—like a floater, a speck in your eye – while also engaging with the social meaning of a “floater”: someone who connects with different groups, and its related terms such as drifter, rover, or wanderer. Weathered by salt, tide, and time, the balls sit between meanings: once objects of play, now discarded and found again.