Dutch lenses on Irish rock open at Phoenix Park
Free entry runs through November at the Visitor Centre, with the same collection already booked for Mexico and a long Amsterdam stay into 2027.
Ramon Music Exhibitions announced on 13 October 2026 that the free exhibition 50 Years of Irish Rock Through the Lens of Dutch Photographers will run at Dublin’s Phoenix Park Visitor Centre from 1 to 30 November 2026. The show, already seen on the east coast and in Cork, keeps a Dutch photographic record of Irish stages in the capital for a month before it travels further afield.
The exhibition first opened at Dún Laoghaire Lexicon in June and then moved to Cork City Library, where it ran from 4 July to 29 August. The Phoenix Park dates place the work in one of Dublin’s most visited public settings, with free admission throughout. The collection has been updated to include recent concert shots, so the hang is not only a retrospective of earlier decades but a living account of acts still on the road.
Six photographers, one long view
The pictures come from six Dutch photographers: Rob Verhorst, Paul Bergen, Gijsbert Hanekroot, Govert de Roos, Patricia Steur and Andreas Terlaak. Their work sits at the centre of the show rather than as decoration around a press narrative. What the viewer gets is a foreign eye on Irish performance — framing, light and timing from outside the usual local press pack — applied to names that Irish audiences already know from the records and the gigs.
Among those framed are U2 (Bono and The Edge); Sinéad O’Connor (who died in 2023); Rory Gallagher (who died in 1995); Van Morrison; Bob Geldof; Hozier (Andrew Hozier-Byrne); Imelda May; and Fontaines D.C. (fronted by Grian Chatten), together with others drawn from the same broad field. The span is deliberate. Gallagher’s generation and Van Morrison’s long career sit beside the stadium years of U2 and the later waves that brought O’Connor, then Hozier, May and Fontaines D.C. into the frame. For a station built on British and Irish pop and rock, that run is the point: craft and stage presence held in stills, not gossip around the edges.
Rory Gallagher belongs to the blues-guitar lineage that Irish rock never quite shook off; his career ended in 1995, so the exhibition treats him as legacy, not as a current bill. Sinéad O’Connor’s presence is of the same order — a voice and a body of work closed in 2023, held here in performance images rather than in commentary. U2, Van Morrison, Hozier, Imelda May and Fontaines D.C. carry the story forward into the living catalogue, which is why the organisers’ decision to fold in newer concert photography matters. The show is not frozen in a single decade.
Next stops: Mexico, then Amsterdam
Before the Phoenix Park run is over, the exhibition will also appear at Galeria Cinco Pies in Ciudad, Mexico, from 27 October to 7 November 2026, in collaboration with the Irish Embassy. That overseas leg sits inside the same autumn window as the Dublin dates and underlines the diplomatic as well as the curatorial brief: Irish rock carried abroad through a Dutch lens, hosted with embassy support.
A longer European stay follows in the new year. From 14 January to 18 April 2027 the collection is due at the Clayton Hotel Amsterdam American — a homecoming of sorts for the photographers and a four-month window that turns a touring hang into a proper residency on Dutch ground. Between Dublin in November, the short Mexico City dates at the turn of the month, and Amsterdam through the spring, the same body of work will have moved from a suburban library and a city library stack into a park visitor centre, a foreign gallery and a landmark hotel.
What changes for the listener is simple. These are the faces and the stances already familiar from the albums and the tours, fixed by photographers who were not writing the Irish music weeklies. Free entry at Phoenix Park removes the usual barrier between a heritage hang and a casual visit. For anyone who has the records of Gallagher, O’Connor, U2, Morrison, Hozier, May or Fontaines D.C. in regular rotation, the month in the park is a chance to see how those careers looked from the other side of the lens — and to catch the show before it leaves for Mexico and, later, for Amsterdam.
The exhibition first opened at Dún Laoghaire Lexicon in June and then moved to Cork City Library, where it ran from 4 July to 29 August. The Phoenix Park dates place the work in one of Dublin’s most visited public settings, with free admission throughout. The collection has been updated to include recent concert shots, so the hang is not only a retrospective of earlier decades but a living account of acts still on the road.
Six photographers, one long view
The pictures come from six Dutch photographers: Rob Verhorst, Paul Bergen, Gijsbert Hanekroot, Govert de Roos, Patricia Steur and Andreas Terlaak. Their work sits at the centre of the show rather than as decoration around a press narrative. What the viewer gets is a foreign eye on Irish performance — framing, light and timing from outside the usual local press pack — applied to names that Irish audiences already know from the records and the gigs.
Among those framed are U2 (Bono and The Edge); Sinéad O’Connor (who died in 2023); Rory Gallagher (who died in 1995); Van Morrison; Bob Geldof; Hozier (Andrew Hozier-Byrne); Imelda May; and Fontaines D.C. (fronted by Grian Chatten), together with others drawn from the same broad field. The span is deliberate. Gallagher’s generation and Van Morrison’s long career sit beside the stadium years of U2 and the later waves that brought O’Connor, then Hozier, May and Fontaines D.C. into the frame. For a station built on British and Irish pop and rock, that run is the point: craft and stage presence held in stills, not gossip around the edges.
Rory Gallagher belongs to the blues-guitar lineage that Irish rock never quite shook off; his career ended in 1995, so the exhibition treats him as legacy, not as a current bill. Sinéad O’Connor’s presence is of the same order — a voice and a body of work closed in 2023, held here in performance images rather than in commentary. U2, Van Morrison, Hozier, Imelda May and Fontaines D.C. carry the story forward into the living catalogue, which is why the organisers’ decision to fold in newer concert photography matters. The show is not frozen in a single decade.
Next stops: Mexico, then Amsterdam
Before the Phoenix Park run is over, the exhibition will also appear at Galeria Cinco Pies in Ciudad, Mexico, from 27 October to 7 November 2026, in collaboration with the Irish Embassy. That overseas leg sits inside the same autumn window as the Dublin dates and underlines the diplomatic as well as the curatorial brief: Irish rock carried abroad through a Dutch lens, hosted with embassy support.
A longer European stay follows in the new year. From 14 January to 18 April 2027 the collection is due at the Clayton Hotel Amsterdam American — a homecoming of sorts for the photographers and a four-month window that turns a touring hang into a proper residency on Dutch ground. Between Dublin in November, the short Mexico City dates at the turn of the month, and Amsterdam through the spring, the same body of work will have moved from a suburban library and a city library stack into a park visitor centre, a foreign gallery and a landmark hotel.
What changes for the listener is simple. These are the faces and the stances already familiar from the albums and the tours, fixed by photographers who were not writing the Irish music weeklies. Free entry at Phoenix Park removes the usual barrier between a heritage hang and a casual visit. For anyone who has the records of Gallagher, O’Connor, U2, Morrison, Hozier, May or Fontaines D.C. in regular rotation, the month in the park is a chance to see how those careers looked from the other side of the lens — and to catch the show before it leaves for Mexico and, later, for Amsterdam.
