Passage

Siobhán McDonald

Friday 16 January - Saturday 21 February 2026

Curated by Margarita Cappock

Siobhan McDonald’s multifaceted project explores Dublin's deep history as a mutable landscape shaped by water, cosmology, and human intervention. Through film, sound, painting, and sculpture, the installation investigates how the city’s shifting ground holds memory and resilience. PASSAGE traces the interdependence of human and more-than-human worlds, revealing the city as a living organism — breathing, eroding, reforming. By weaving together soundscapes, imagery, and environmental research, McDonald offers a meditation on place and change — a reminder that the boundaries between solid and fluid, human and elemental, are always in motion. The work calls to mind ancient myths surrounding the rivers and seas as well their raw and fragile beauty.

Here is a short documentary of the project.

The presentation of Passage at The Lab is the culmination of a major series of international exhibitions and events by artist Siobhán McDonald, including the Biennale des Arts et de l’Océan 2025, in Nice 2025; The United Nations Ocean Conference Villa Arson, Nice (2025), RHA Dublin (2025), and the James Joyce Summer School in Trieste (2025), Art Basel, Paris (2025), Dublin Port (2025)

Siobhán McDonald is the recipient of prestigious international awards, including the European Commission's S+T+ARTS 4Water Award (2024) and the inaugural Ocean Memory Award (2022). In 2023, she received further awards through the EU Commission Alumni Award (Italy), the Alfred Kordelin Foundation Climate Whirl Award (Helsinki.) Presentation highlights include exhibitions at venues Biennale des Arts et de l’Océan 2025 at Villa Arson, Nice (2025); the Royal Hibernian Academy, (2025); VISUAL (2024); The Model, Sligo (2023); Living Canvas Public Art Project, (2023); Palais des Beaux-Arts (BOZAR), Brussels (2022 and 2020); Ars Electronica, Austria (2022); Centrul Cultural Clujean, Romania (2022); The Weisman Museum, USA (2022); Centre for Contemporary Art ŁAŹNIA, Poland (2022); Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris (2022, 2017); Deutsches Hygiene-Museum (DHMD), Germany (2022); Volta, Basel (2021); Limerick City Art Gallery (2019); and the National Trust–Fox Talbot Museum, UK (2019), among others.

Siobhán McDonald holds a Masters in Visual Arts Practice from IADT (2011), Dublin, and a BA (Honours) degree in Art and Design from the University of Ulster, Belfast. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections.

Dr. Margarita Cappock is an art historian and curator with Dublin City Arts Office. She has developed and delivered major exhibition collaborations with international museums in Europe and Australia. She is a published author and a regular contributor of scholarly articles and essays to international and national exhibition publications and art journals. She has delivered guest lectures, conference papers and contributed as a discussion panellist for a diverse range of audiences in Ireland, UK, Austria, Germany, Italy, the United States, Australia and Japan.