Art in the Park V brings together nine artists across Swan Park in Buncrana, transforming this public space into an open-air gallery. This year’s exhibition invites visitors to explore artworks that engage 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 come together under a shared theme At the Threshold.

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

Today, although Inishowen is part of the Republic of Ireland, it remains closely connected to Derry, highlighting its ongoing identity as a border region shaped by overlapping political, cultural, and social influences.

The theme At the Threshold looks at Inishowen not just as a place, but as a condition. A threshold is a point of transition—a space where things meet, change, or are negotiated. It can be physical, like a border or coastline, but also social or personal: a moment of waiting, crossing, or transformation.

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

Thinking about thresholds helps us reflect on how people move through the world and how their experiences are shaped by larger forces—political, environmental, and social. Thresholds are moments when the familiar can feel uncertain, and when meanings begin to shift.

They are also connected to the idea of being at the edge. At the edge, perspectives can change: what we see and understand may feel unstable or unfamiliar. The horizon—always just out of reach—reminds us that our point of view is never fixed.

In these in-between spaces, reality and imagination can overlap. Thresholds can heighten awareness, bringing attention to moments of change and possibility. They invite us to consider how we respond to uncertainty, and how new ways of thinking and being can emerge.

Ireland itself sits at the western edge of Europe, and Inishowen at the north-west edge of Ireland. This layered geography gives 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 explore the idea of the threshold from ecological, emotional, political, historical, and spatial perspectives. Their works approach the threshold as a liminal space—a zone of transition where meaning is open and evolving.

Each artwork can be experienced individually, but together they offer a wider reflection on how thresholds shape both landscapes and lives. Through installations, photography, sound, and sculpture, the artists invite visitors to pause, reflect, cross, return, and see these parks in new ways.

Participating artists: Annie Hogg, Jessica Auer, Santiago Vélez, Gail Ritchie, Rosalind Lowry, Darcy Patterson, Sue Morris, Roberto Uribe-Castro, and Locky Morris.

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.

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.

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. 

Roberto Uribe-Castro | Abyss

Locky Morris | Floaters

Artist Talk & Walk at Swan Park & Barrick Hill

Saturday May 2nd

Starting at 11:30am

1:30pm tea and nibbles back at the Angling Centre

Bus to Carn at 2:00pm from the Angling Centre

With continued artist talks at Barrick Hill Park

Returning to Buncrana, to the Drift Inn for music

Booking for bus essential