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arts · Friday 3 July 2026 · Centre hours 
Tempest
At Roscommon Arts Centre · Circular Road, Roscommon, Co. Roscommon
At Roscommon Arts Centre · Circular Road, Roscommon, Co. Roscommon
Steve Wickham is best known as the rock fiddler who defined the sound of The Waterboys through the 1980s and beyond, but his practice runs considerably wider than music. Tempest is a collection of paintings - small works begun as a visual diary during fifty nights in a Dublin hotel - and it opens at Roscommon Arts Centre on Friday 3 July 2026, running free of charge through the summer until 11 September. If you have any interest in how one artist moves between disciplines, or simply want to spend time with unusual, intimate work that came out of an unusual situation, this is worth the visit.
The exhibition takes its name and its origin from a theatrical run. In October 2023, playwright Deirdre Kinahan’s production Tempesta played at the Glass Mask Theatre on Dawson Street in Dublin. Wickham was the musician for the show and also played a small acting role. He checked into The REZz hotel for the duration - fifty nights, as the concierge counted. The paintings in Tempest were made or begun in that hotel bedroom; their dimensions reflect the confined space where they were created.
The resulting series of around twenty works sits somewhere between diary and finished art. Wickham has described his practice as eclectic, spanning music, film, animation, painting, drawing and printmaking, and these pieces carry that restlessness. They are figurative and mixed media in approach - grounded in observation but not documentary. Roscommon Arts Centre’s gallery space is on the ground floor, bright and accessible, a good setting for work of this intimacy.
Roscommon town is well connected by road. From Dublin, take the N4 west via Mullingar and branch south at Longford on the N61, or continue on the M4/N60 route; the drive is roughly 1 hour 40 minutes. From Galway, the N63 runs directly north-east into town in under an hour. Bus Éireann operates services on the Dublin - Westport and Dublin - Sligo corridors, with stops in Roscommon town. The arts centre is on Circular Road, a short walk from the bus stop and from the main square. Street parking is available nearby, and there are two dedicated disabled parking bays directly outside the gallery entrance.
The town is small enough to walk in an afternoon - the ruins of Roscommon Castle are five minutes from the arts centre, and the county museum is close by. There is more to see in Roscommon and across Co. Roscommon.
Heading to Roscommon Arts Centre in Roscommon? Roscommon has plenty more to see. Read the Roscommon area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.