Photographic exhibition exploring rural Ireland from a skateboard opens in Mayo

A NEW photographic exhibition exploring rural Ireland from a skateboard has gone on display at the National Museum of Ireland in Mayo.

Róidín (an old Irish word for a narrow country lane that takes you off the beaten track) opened yesterday at the Courtyard Gallery in Turlough Park, Castlebar.

It explores aspects of the lived, social and economic history of rural Ireland through a series of spaces, reflecting on a range of themes from loss and dereliction to endurance, resilience, and renewal.

The images and stories were compiled in 2025 for a special issue of the Irish skateboarding publication, Goblin Magazine.

Many of the featured roads and spaces have an ‘underground history’ of being used for different purposes - from road bowling and handball to all-night raves and ‘boy racers’.

Speaking about the exhibition, Philip Halton, Goblin Magazine said: “Róidín uses skateboarding to reach imperfect, overlooked, and often beautiful spaces outside towns and cities. The project documents not only the spots themselves, but the histories and cultures embedded in them. It reflects on public space as something far broader than formal plazas or town squares. Its focus is on how communities repeatedly reclaim space in their own way.

“Running through the exhibition is a wider rural story: dereliction, emptied buildings, and the fading of informal gathering places. The decline of spaces like handball alleys is treated as a mirror of rural change - a reminder that public space is never permanent, and only exists through the people who choose to gather and make it theirs.”

Welcoming the exhibition to the National Museum, Tiernan Gaffney, curator with the Irish Folklife Division, said the museum is actively collecting skateboarding objects and stories as they represent an interesting facet of Ireland’s more recent social history.

“The Róidín exhibition is a great visual example of Irish subcultures that have emerged since the late 20th and early 21st century. The Irish Folklife Division is working with many communities to help document the material culture of Irish subcultures with acquisitions inclusive of skateboards, pirate radio ephemera and even videogame consoles.”

Róidin is open in the Courtyard Gallery at the National Museum of Ireland, Turlough Park. Admission is free.