All the Dark Places is a site-specific exhibition at Interface, a unique workspace for visual artists that’s based in a former salmon hatchery in Connemara’s Lough Inagh Valley.

This exhibition, for the Galway International Arts Festival, features five artists whose work explores the unseen pulse of the landscape. The five –  Eliška Kováčiková, Hardy Langer, Margaret O Brien, Mary Donnelly and Noel Arrigan –  have used paint, kinetic art, multi-media sculpture and installation to respond to the landscape. Their work ranges from the spiritual and metaphysical to exploring the more sinister, corporate exploitation of nature.

Interface is a unique studio and residency programme for visual artists, dancers, writers and musicians, situated in this former salmon hatchery in the Inagh Valley. It was founded and is run by Alannah Robins, who curated this show.

Interface aims to provide opportunities for artists to explore intersections between scientific research and art in this extraordinary place, she explains.

The hatchery facility was built in the late 1980s when architects, Scott Tallon Walker, were commissioned by Carroll’s cigarette company to design the biggest, most advanced salmon hatchery in the world. But the project failed within a decade. Since then, this industrial facility in the heart of Connemara has been repurposed to house several innovative scientific and artistic research projects.

The space offers people a feeling of “walking through a James Bond set, through the semi-derelict remains of the hatchery infrastructure, crumbling remnants of grandeur and hubris”, according to Alannah. It’s perfect for contemporary art, she adds.

For this exhibition, the artists engaged with the subject of land and this particular context in their own, unique ways.

The Egg Room, once the space where the salmon-hatching process began, houses work by  Noel Arrigan and Margaret O Brien.