International Exhibitions
International Exhibitions
Exhibiting Abroad & Hosting International Artists in the HeARTlands of Ireland
Exhibiting Abroad & Hosting International Artists in the HeARTlands of Ireland
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1. Bringing HeARTlands Abroad
1. Bringing HeARTlands Abroad
We aim to bring HeARTlands exhibitions to a variety of international venues every year. If you run a gallery, festival or cultural space, and our themes — Landscapes, Legends & Love Stories — resonate with your community's identity, we'd love to talk with you about hosting us.
This works best with organisations who share our ethos: generosity over competition, curiosity over judgement, and genuine interest in what our artists could bring to your place and your people.
Get in touch — we'd love to hear from you
Get in touch — we'd love to hear from you
We're building these relationships one at a time, not through an open call. We'd love to hear from international artists, galleries, festivals and cultural organisations working with landscape, folklore, myth, or the relationship between place and story.
Augnacliff Dolmen by John Riddle
2. Exhibiting International Artists in Longford
2. Exhibiting International Artists in Longford
We also welcome international artists to exhibit here in the heart of Ireland. Longford, our home, is a place of lakes and rivers, boglands and ancient pathways — small communities, and space to pause and imagine.
Ireland has always been a place of stories, carried in memory and layered into the landscape itself, and that same generosity runs through how we welcome people here. The Irish tradition of meitheal — coming together to help one another and share what we have — is something we try to live out in every exhibition and Get Together. Visiting artists tell us it feels less like an intimidating arts space and more like crossing the threshold of a welcoming home.
Our First International Exhibition 2027
Our First International Exhibition 2027
Teruel, Spain
Teruel, Spain
At HeARTlands, we believe that stories travel.
They cross mountains and rivers, seas and borders. They survive in landscapes, in folklore, mythology and faith, in memory and in the stories communities continue to tell about who they are and where they come from.
Through HeARTlands we are returning to an idea that first began to take shape almost ten years ago: the creation of an international network connecting towns, cities and communities through the stories that belong to their places.
The beginnings of that story can be traced to 2017, when Longford and Ireland were represented in Teruel, Spain, as part of a project entitled 'Europe in Love' — a European initiative that sought to bring together places connected with legendary love stories and explore the possibility of developing an international cultural network around them.
The 2017 International Congress in Teruel, Spain
The ambition then was to create connections through story, heritage, culture and shared European identity.
Although the proposed European project did not ultimately secure the funding required to continue, the idea did not disappear. Neither did the friendships, relationships and connections created through it.
Almost ten years later, through HeARTlands, we are picking up a thread that was first woven in 2017 and carrying it forward into a new creative chapter.
Our ambition is to revisit and reimagine that original idea, developing Landscapes, Legends & Love Stories as a growing international story trail and cultural network connecting artists, towns, cities, festivals, cultural organisations and creative communities across Europe and, in time, farther afield.
We want to follow stories outward from Ireland — discovering the connections, echoes and shared themes that exist between Irish folklore, mythology, history and Christian traditions and the legends and love stories of communities elsewhere.
We are particularly interested in places where landscape and story have become inseparable: places associated with legendary lovers, ancient myths, saints and pilgrims, folklore, historic journeys, sacred traditions and stories of identity and belonging.
For us, this is not simply about taking Irish art exhibitions abroad.
It is about making connections, and developing friendships.
It's also about creative and cultural exchange.
Returning to Teruel
Returning to Teruel
The first chapter in this renewed international journey will take us back to Teruel in Aragón, Spain.
The relationship began in 2017 through Europe in Love, when Longford and Ireland joined Teruel and other European partners in exploring the idea of connecting places through their legendary stories.
Longford brought the ancient Irish story of Tochmarc Étain into conversation with Teruel’s story of Diego de Marcilla and Isabel de Segura — the Lovers of Teruel — alongside other European stories including that of Romeo and Juliet in Verona, Italy.
The relationships established through that experience have endured.
And so, in 2027 — ten years after that first meeting — we will return to Teruel, bringing with us the work of Irish artists and creatives and beginning a new chapter in a story that started there a decade earlier.
Rather than attempting simply to recreate Europe in Love, we want to honour its original spirit while allowing something new to grow from it.
Members of Bodas de Isabel Segura & The International Congress
Why Cultural Exchange Matters to Us:
Why Cultural Exchange Matters to Us:
At a time when our world can so often feel divided by borders, politics, conflict and difference, creativity offers another way of meeting one another.
Art has no borders.
A painting does not need a passport to move someone. A story told in one country can awaken a memory in another. A landscape can feel strangely familiar thousands of kilometres from home. A legend belonging to one community can reveal something universal about love, loss, courage, longing, identity or belonging.
Art allows us to meet not first as nationalities, institutions or strangers, but as people.
It creates space for curiosity rather than assumption, conversation rather than division and connection rather than separation.
Through sharing art and stories, we hope to connect hearts and minds across borders and build relationships founded on creativity, friendship, mutual respect and genuine curiosity about one another’s cultures.
We are interested not only in what makes our stories different, but in what they reveal about the things we share.
Across countries and centuries, people have told stories about love and loss, journeys and homecomings, animals and landscapes, heroes and saints, the natural and supernatural worlds, conflict and reconciliation, life and death.
The characters change.
The landscapes change.
The languages change.
But something recognisably human remains.
This is the heart of the matter.
Toasting the friendship between Longford &Teruel,
Ireland & Spain
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