Dublin Fringe Festival and Pallas Open Projects join forces for FringePOP
Dublin Fringe Festival and Pallas Open Projects are delighted to announce that we are joining forces for a new partnership for the 2026 Festival – FringePOP. Through this new initiative, we will co-present visual art with an interdisciplinary lens blending bold artwork and contemporary discourse in Pallas’ new space in Newmarket Square. This initiative provides a vital platform and new home for line-blurring contemporary art in the heart of Dublin’s famous Liberties community.
A selection of visual and interdisciplinary artists were nominated by Dublin Fringe Festival’s Programming Team through our open call and expressions of interest, and the artist was selected in partnership with the Pallas curatorial team. We are delighted to announce that the inaugural artist selected is AlanJames Burns with their exhibition – The Waking Walls.
“This partnership is key to Dublin Fringe’s commitment to ensuring visual and interdisciplinary artists are a significant part of our programme. We’re incredibly excited to be working with Pallas in their new and exciting space in Newmarket Square – one that will become a home for radical art in Dublin 8. We are especially delighted to be presenting AlanJames Burns’ exhibition – The Waking Walls – and bringing their timely and beautiful artwork about environmental grief to Dublin for the first time”. Bee Sparks, Festival Director
“Pallas Projects/Studios champions artists whose work challenges convention and creates space for urgent conversations. Through our collaboration with Dublin Fringe, we are committed to supporting ambitious interdisciplinary practice, and we're excited to establish our new venue at Newmarket Square as a place where visual art can connect with new audiences during the festival. This platform is for artists whose practice refuses easy categorisation and whose work expands what a festival and a gallery can be. I’m really excited to welcome AlanJames Burns' excellent The Waking Walls as the inaugural exhibition in this new collaboration.” Eve Woods, Curator at Pallas Projects/Studios.
ABOUT PALLAS PROJECTS / STUDIOS
Pallas Projects/Studios is a not-for-profit artist-run organisation dedicated to the facilitation of artistic production, presentation and discourse, via the provision of affordable artists studios in Dublin's city centre, and curated projects. Learn more about Pallas here.
THE WAKING WALLS
EXHIBITION: 5 – 20 Sep, 12:00–18:00 (closed Mondays)
Feel the stirring cries and howling wails of a grieving Cloughoughter Crannóg. First created over two days in September 2023, The Waking Walls was a caoineadh reverberating over the rippling waters of the Cavan lakelands, lamenting the ecological losses the Crannóg and its castle have witnessed over their lifetime. Now reimagined as an immersive video installation, this collaborative artwork brings you back to the water, to the grief, to the bellowing keen of the crannóg. The Waking Walls is a collaborative artwork by AlanJames Burns, with Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan, Anne Marie Hynes, Andrew Lynch, Trevor Whelan, Ben Glover, NYAH, Karina Lynch, Martin Donohoe, Jenny O’Hare, Laura O’Keeffe and Gearoid O’Hallmhurain.
The Waking Walls will be open from the 5th – 20th September from 12:00–18:00 daily (closed on Mondays). It is free and unticketed. It will be relaxed exhibition space with creative captions.
ABOUT ALANJAMES BURNS
AlanJames Burns, (They, Them) is a neurodivergent, environmental and audiovisual artist, curator and festival maker producing interactive, socially engaged and site-specific projects. The focal points of their highly collaborative practice are disability, climate emergency and a just society. Their projects include; Artistic director of Disrupt Disability Arts Festival, since 2022, an annual festival taking place on at Project Arts centre and online; Unmasking Nature, BETA Festival November 2026 a national Creative Ireland and Research Ireland climate action project exploring the climate crisis through the perspective of disability; Our Place, 2020-26, a socially engaged project co-designed alongside adults with intellectual disabilities supported by SJOG Liffey Service and Carlow Arts Festival; Caoineadh Dúlra & The Waking Walls, 2020-2026, community work that embraces the processes of caoineadh to understand experiences of ecological grief.