Blackrock Castle Observatory

18/06/2026

Dorothy Lordan
'Burren A Lunar Landscape'.
Ceramic white porcelain with black underglaze.
On display as part of our Solar Eclipse exhibition.

15/06/2026

"Solar Eclipse" opening night. A collection of work from some of Corks most talented artists, running throughout the summer at BCO.

06/05/2026

05/05/2026

Further details: https://www.bco.ie/open-call-for-artists-solar-eclipse-an-exhibition-at-blackrock-castle-observatory/

10/04/2026

26/02/2026

🏆 FINALIST ALERT! 🏆
MTU Blackrock Observatory has been named a finalist in the Best in Tourism, Culture & Arts at the 2026 Cork Business of the Year Awards - and we are over the moon! 🌙🔭

We are so proud and so grateful, but now we need YOU in our corner. Voting is open until March 13th and counts for 50% of the result!

⭐ Cast your vote: https://forms.gle/GeWKATL67vCNsy9W8
Every vote brings us one step closer - share this and help us reach for the stars! 🌟

24/02/2026

You're invited. ✨
Gleaners & Angelus, a new exhibition of oil paintings by Irish artist Ian Malone, launches this Friday 27th February at Blackrock Castle Observatory.

Rooted in memory, identity, and the quiet labour of ordinary lives, this is a deeply personal body of work about shared poverty, piety, and community. About the art that connects us to ancestors we never quite knew.

🗓 Free Launch event: Friday 27th February, 5pm – 7pm
📍 Blackrock Castle Observatory
🖼 On until Sunday 19th April (Regular admission prices apply after the Launch event).

We hope to see you there!!

19/02/2026

📌 Coming Soon:

Gleaners & Angelus

A new series of oil paintings by Irish artist Ian Malone, rooted in memory, identity, and the quiet labour of ordinary lives.

Growing up in his grandparents' home in the 1980s, the only art on the walls were two cheap prints: Millet's The Gleaners and The Angelus. Those images never left him. This exhibition is his attempt to understand why they meant so much.

Borrowing peasant figures from the 1800s and early 1900s, drawn from the works of Jean-François Millet, Aloysius O'Kelly, Daniel Ridgway-Knight, Nikolay Kasatkin, Julien Dupré and others - Malone reimagines these characters through a richly contemporary visual language, taking further inspiration from Van Gogh, Picasso, Dalí, Lichtenstein, Keith Haring and beyond.

Food runs throughout the paintings as a symbol of cultivation, class, and culture; abundant in form and meaning, carrying echoes of taboo, social status, and survival. The human figures are rendered small against vast landscapes, almost insect-like, a quiet statement about our place within the natural world.

This is a deeply personal body of work about shared poverty, piety, and community. About the ancestors we never quite knew, and the art that connects us to them anyway.

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Stay tuned for Exhibition launch date at Blackrock Castle Observatory

09/01/2026

Check out the winning entries to our Cosmic Christmas Art Competition. ✨️🎨

Congratulations to the winners and to everyone who entered. We loved looking through all of the submissions and it was so hard to pick our favourites! ✨️🎄

22/12/2025

This is a very interesting read about one of very own Irish astronomers of the past!