An exploration of memory, place, and the echoes of past dwellings.
The spaces we inhabit shape us as much as we shape them. Longitude of Longing traces the delicate connection between home and identity, where memory and geography intertwine.
An exploration of memory, place, and the echoes of past dwellings.
The spaces we inhabit shape us as much as we shape them. Longitude of Longing traces the delicate connection between home and identity, where memory and geography intertwine.
Mark McGreevy: Zona showcases a compelling new series of drawings and paintings created over the past five years, reflecting the artist’s fascination with sentient landscapes as a repository for materials and ideas – sites which hold their own agency.
Through this new body of work, McGreevy summons a vivid terrain marked by borders, liminal boundaries, implausible structures, and sites resonating with ominous energy. The works guide viewers into an unrecorded zone of edgelands, dumps, burial grounds, and the remnants of a fantastical industrial collapse.
Anchored in an obsessive drawing practice, the imagery unfolds like a storyboard for a volatile and magical realm. From these landscapes, ruins and effluence spill outward, forming a surreal “anti-archaeology.” Rather than unearthing the past, McGreevy’s paintings reveal a landscape erupting into the present, exposing fractured histories and precarious futures.
Infused with the atmospheric intensity of Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland, and René Magritte, and echoing the eerie, speculative narratives of Quatermass and the Pit by Nigel Kneale, McGreevy’s work bridges the familiar and the fantastical.
Zona invites us into an “uncanny realm” where imagination, decay, and mystery intersect, offering a profound meditation on the landscapes we navigate and the narratives they conceal.
Biography
Mark McGreevy is a graduate of Ulster University, Belfast. His exhibitions include shows at The MAC, Belfast; VISUAL, Carlow; The F.E. McWilliam Gallery, Banbridge; The Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast; The Lab Gallery, Dublin; Third Space Gallery, Belfast; The Crawford Gallery, Cork; Katzen Art Centre, Washington, DC; The Glucksman, Cork, among others. McGreevy is the recipient of many awards including the Suki Tea Prize, Arts Council of Ireland Bursary Awards, Arts Council NI SIAP and The Freeland’s Foundation. He has been shortlisted for prestigious art prizes such as The AIB Award and BOC Emerging Artist Award and has participated on artist residency programmes at Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, and The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. His work is held many public and private collections.
Co Curated by Dr Louise Wallace and Feargal O’Malley
This exhibition, created by artist and University of Ulster researcher Brónagh Corr McNicholl, explores the evolving landscape of young masculinities in Derry/Londonderry following the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. In a city straddling the echoes of conflict and the potential of peace, young masculinities find themselves in a liminal space—caught between the remnants of traditional gender roles and the emerging fluidity of self-expression. Here, masculinity is no longer fixed or singular; it is diverse, evolving, and deeply shaped by the city’s complex history and social transformations.
This exhibition illuminates how these young people negotiate their place within this transitional space. Through photography, oral histories, and exhibition, the artist explores the complexities of their identities as they challenge established paradigms of manhood. The process of photography is complemented by digital post-production, where images are further manipulated and layered to reflect the fluidity and complexity of these evolving masculinities. Digital techniques allow for an engagement with the liminal nature of this journey, pushing the boundaries of traditional portraiture to reflect the internal and external transformations at play.
By focusing on these young people, the exhibition showcases the diverse, inclusive ways in which masculinity can be reimagined—capturing the liminal space where tradition meets transformation, and where new, more inclusive identities are being forged.
Samar Nezamabad (She/Her, b.1999) is a Belfast- and Limerick-based artist and curator exploring time, memory, and grief through analogue photography and installation.
Her work Phantasm reflects on losing her mother, portraying a home that feels both alive with memory and hollow with absence. Using expired film, she captures the physical remnants of grief, drawing from gothic influences to contrast the house’s decay with her own emotional landscape.
Aisling O’Beirn’s exhibition explores the relationship between art, science, and environmental change. Using sculpture, installation, and animation, she examines the impact of artificial light on ecosystems and humanity’s disconnection from the night sky. Featuring newly commissioned and reworked pieces, the exhibition highlights the celestial as an ecologically vital force.
A Bbeyond new commission
Gabija Jocyte (b. 2003) is a Lithuanian and Belfast-based, installation and performance artist. Exploring the relationships that can exist between a viewer and exhibited object, her practice manifests through a hybrid of sculpture, found objects, writing and lens work to delve into these themes within immersive spaces.
With the persistent surveillance we are under, the work aims to invite self-reflection in the questioning of the performative. Building to bring awareness in how and why we look, while examining the methods in which creative practice can bring voyeuristic, emotive or intimate experiences.
See www.bbeyond.live for more information.
Festivals, Community & Creativity
Belfast Met End of Year Student Show 2025, a celebration of emerging talent and creative excellence. This year’s theme—Festivals, Community & Creativity—explores the power of artistic expression to unite, inspire, and transform.
The exhibition features exciting work in a variety of media work from students of Art Foundation and BTEC Levels 2 and 3. Through a fusion of visual arts, design, and mixed-media, students present thought-provoking works that reflect the vibrancy of cultural gatherings, the strength of collective identity, and the boundless possibilities of creative collaboration.
Venue: Belfast Metropolitan College, 125–153 Millfield, Belfast BT1 1HS
Opening: Thursday 15 May, 6-8pm
Exhibition continues weekdays 10am-3pm until 22 May.
This exhibition is free to attend, please check the Belfast Met website for access information.
The Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival and Out To Lunch are annual festivals of music, comedy, theatre, art and literature which take place in January and May in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
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Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival / Out To Lunch Arts Festival
Unit 8
Northern Whig House
Bridge Street
Belfast
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