Things To Do: Await the Leaving Cert results, celebrate the hairstylists, touch everything in a gallery

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Pinky Ring

Last week, Scottish-Irish artist Struàn Bell launched his new solo show Pinky Ring.

The sixth exhibition in Pallas’ 2026 Artist-Initiated Projects programme, Pinky Ring presents a series of plaster relief carvings that are shaped by “ideas of speculative function, symbolic architectures, and objects of personal affectation”.

While the reliefs depict mundane sights like a chair in a spacious room or a cat, Bell imbues these with a “sense of private importance” by inserting faceted gemstones, or painting arrows into the scenes, the significance of which is left unresolved.

Pinky Ring is primarily interested in how personal objects can absorb memory, attachment, and become charged with emotional weight.

It will be on show until 18 July. But if you’re in the area this evening, Bell will be in conversation with its curator Katie O’Grady at 6pm.

For more information, visit Pallas Projects’ website here.

Peer

On Tuesday, artist Amanda Jane Graham unveiled Peer, her new exhibition at The LAB Gallery, which explores how hairstylists have contributed to visual culture from the Renaissance to the present.

Curated by Margarita Cappock, Peer uses sculpture, drawing and sound installations to explore the relationship between hairdressing and art history through visual arts, sociological research and Graham’s own 24-year career as a hairstylist.

The exhibition takes its title from the eighteenth-century campaign led by Parisian hairstylists who sought recognition as artistic practitioners, and who published a hairdressing manifesto in 1768. Graham runs with that idea, and expands it out to pay tribute to the hairstylists through the ages who are seldom recognised for their creative and artistic expertise.

Presented by Dublin City Council, Peer will run in The LAB Gallery until 15 August.

For more information, visit the exhibition page here.

Gallery Take Over

Starting today, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios is hosting a found-day summer programme of projects and workshops devised by resident artists Alexandre Caretti, Tara Carroll and Kathy Tynan.

Formerly known as Summer School, Gallery Take Over was conceived as a way to transform the gallery into a collaborative and creative space, with participants welcome to drop in at any time between now and Sunday.

Caretti will be hosting "If the Glove fits", which invites you the chance to create your own unique pattern for a pair of paper gloves. Inspired by patterns and motifs discovered in the city’s streets and museums Caretti has assembled a collection of photographs and objects to inspire participants.

For those who create a pair, they will be allowed to take one glove home as a personal keepsake, while the other is added to a textile artwork in the gallery created by Caretti.

And if you’re interested, at 2pm on Saturday, Caretti will also be hosting a workshop called "How to Make a Shirt", in which he will lead participants on a journey that culminates in them making good on the title of the workshop. You can book a space here.

After this, artist Tara Carroll will be leading "Please Touch", in which participants collaboratively create a space to explore how touch is transferred across time, space and bodies.

With "Please Touch", Carroll removes the classic gallery sign which says “do not touch” and puts up one instructing exactly the opposite. The central question then is how a gallery space and our experience of it changes once we are told to “please touch” the objects on display.

On Sunday at 10:30am, there's a "Please Touch" workshop, which offers “a relaxed space to slow down and engage with the senses, inviting you to become an active part of the work". You can book a space for that here.

On Friday at 11:30am, Carroll is hosting "Just There" an all-ages sculptural play workshop which promises “lots of soft cushions and cosy chats".

They want to know if you feel your body has been considered when visiting a gallery, if you feel you can truly take your time and feel comfortable to engage with the work, and if you think there isn’t enough seating.

You can book a space for "Just There" here.

Finally, painter Kathy Tynan is organising "Painting the Present", which offers you the chance to take inspiration and reflect on your day-to-day surroundings through painting.

In "Painting the Present", Tynan will guide participants on the various layers that make up an observational painting process, which includes photography and sketching, and which allows you to create a “collective painted display of everyday life” on the gallery walls.

Tynan will be hosting the workshop ‘Painting a Home’ on Saturday at 11:30am, in which she shows children and young people how to paint in layers with reference to traditional steps in underpainting.

You can book a spot here.

For more information on the Gallery Take Over, visit the Temple Bar Gallery + Studios website here.

The Last of the High Kings

On Monday evening, as part of their From The Vaults series, the Irish Film Institute will be screening David Keating’s 1996 coming-of-age comedy-drama The Last of the High Kings.

Set in Howth during 1977, the film follows Frankie Griffin (Jared Leto) as he awaits his Leaving Cert results, hangs out with his friends, listens to Thin Lizzy and tries to win the attention of two local protestant girls, Romy Thomas (Emily Mortimer) and Jayne Wayne (Lorraine Pilkington), something which displeases his staunchly republican mother, played by the late Catherine O’Hara.

Based on the novel by Ferdia Mac Anna, and also featuring Gabriel Byrne, Stephen Rea, Christina Ricci and Colm Meaney, The Last of the High Kings is a lost nugget from a period when Leto was known only to the Irish Times’ Michael Dwyer as a Rob Lowe lookalike and the star of My So Called Life.

According to Dwyer, Leto was “blandly unremarkable”, Byrne’s cameo was fleeting, O’Hara capsized the film with her “wildly over the top” performance, and Meaney plays a “leering, electioneering” Fianna Fáil-er. In essence, it is everything one comes to expect and adore from 1990s Irish cinema.

Director Keating will also be in the house to introduce the digitally restored film.

The Last of the High Kings will screen at 6:20pm on Monday, 13 July. Tickets are available here.

Best Before Date

Both this Thursday and next, filmmakers Ingrid Machado and Paula María Roldán are holding a fundraiser in Marrowbone Books for their new short film.

Written and directed by Machado, who also curates the Solax Film Club, and produced by Roldán, Best Before Date is a dark comedy “inspired by immigrant life in Ireland and an urban myth from the Brazilian community about a ghostly immigration officer who decides your fate”.

This evening at 8pm (Thursday, 9 July), they will be staging a gig in Marrowbone Books, with live sets from Siobhán Franks, Vaida Kasparavičiūtė and Henrique Nunes, and Luisa Annibali and Johnathan Batista.

Then, next Thursday (16 July) at 8pm, the bookshop will play host to a spoken-word open mic session, in which they are asking people with migration stories to come in and share a tale or two.

Donations start from €4, and can be sent to their crowdfunding page here.

And if you’re eager to see what else the Solax Film Club has lined up over the next while, they will be in the Sean O’Casey Community Centre on Friday, 17 July to screen a collection of short films made by immigrant filmmakers.

Tickets for Solax Film Club presents We Came This Far II are available here.

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The Liberties Festival, one of the oldest community festivals in the country, returns across 7 days with over 70 (mostly free) events.

Monday 20 July to Sunday 26 July 2026.

Find out what's on here

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Back to the Pixels: Retro Computing & Gaming Day 2026

Tog is bringing its Retro Computing and Gaming Day back this weekend.

On Saturday, 11 July, the Tog Hackerspace will be given over to retro computing for the afternoon, followed by a LAN party and open social with homemade pizza.

Come see some working computers and games consoles from the 1970s through to the 2000s and appreciate that weird staticky feeling only a CRT TV screen can deliver.

The Tog Hackerspace is located in Unit 1B at Motor City on the Kylemore Road. The event kicks off at 2pm.

For more information, visit Tog’s website here.

The Stinging Fly 6-month Fiction Workshop

The Stinging Fly is offering four 6-month fiction workshops this year, all of which will run from late September 2026 until early April 2027.

The aim of the workshop programme is to provide writers with the opportunity to work with a group of similarly motivated individuals towards developing their writing practice over an expanded period of time.

Eight places are available in the online workshop and the hybrid workshop. Ten places are available in the in-person workshop.

All workshop places will be offered by Friday, 21 August.

For more information, and to apply, visit the Stinging Fly website here.