CIACLA Presents The Irish Contemporaries {V} Across Two Los Angeles Venues This May

Major Irish contemporary art exhibition spans 18th Street Arts Center and Angels Gate Cultural Center, showcasing leading Irish and Irish-connected artists

SANTA MONICA, CA, UNITED STATES, April 7, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- CIACLA – Contemporary Irish Arts Center Los Angeles, in partnership with MART Gallery & Studios, 18th Street Arts Center, and Angels Gate Cultural Center, announces The Irish Contemporaries {V}, a multi-venue exhibition taking place across Los Angeles from May 15 to June 6, 2026.

Now in its fifth edition, The Irish Contemporaries has become a key platform for presenting contemporary Irish visual art internationally. The 2026 programme expands across two cultural venues, offering audiences a broad and engaging insight into current Irish artistic practice.

Featured artists across both venues include Deirdre Mulrooney and Gearóid O’Dea, whose practices anchor the exhibition’s exploration of storytelling, identity, and lived experience. Mulrooney’s multidisciplinary work engages with performance, ritual, and the body, addressing themes of identity, displacement, and trauma. O’Dea’s practice centres on mark-making and observation, reflecting on memory, presence, and the construction of personal narrative. Together, their work frames the exhibition’s broader investigation into how stories are formed, remembered, and reimagined.

The exhibition opens at 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica on Friday, May 15 at 1pm, followed by a second opening at Angels Gate Cultural Center, San Pedro on Saturday, May 16 at 1pm. Both exhibitions run through June 6.

The exhibition explores Ireland’s evolving relationship with story, identity, and contemporary lived experience. Rather than looking to the past as something fixed, the artists engage with storytelling as an active, ongoing process that shapes how we understand self, place, and connection.

“This multi-site exhibition highlights how Irish-connected artists continue to reinvent how we understand story, culture, and visual language, no matter which side of the Atlantic they’re working from,” said curator Matthew Nevin.

Curated by Matthew Nevin and Ciara Scanlan, the exhibition continues CIACLA’s mission to support Irish artists internationally while building meaningful cultural exchange between Ireland and the United States.

Additional Spotlight Artists at 18th Street Arts Center include Anselm and Joan McClain, Barbara Lavery, Bren Holmes, Katie Thibault, Mary J Sheridan, and Robert Fox, and at Angels Gate Cultural Center include Arthur Rosa, Brenda Welsh, Carol Anne McChrystal, Elisabeth Banim, Inés Pesado Catrufo, Jenny Cosgrave, Jerry McGrath, Paul James Kearney, Pete Michels, Shaun O’Connor, and Sheila McMullin.

Supported By: CIACLA, 18th Street Arts Center, Angels Gate Cultural Center, MART Gallery & Studios, Culture Ireland, the Government of Ireland Emigrant Support Programme, Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, and The LA County Department of Arts and Culture.

matthew nevin
CIACLA
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