Golden Thread Gallery, 84-94 Great Patrick St, Belfast Tues-Fri 10.30am- 5.30pm, Sat 10.30am-4pm Until Feb 4 golden threadgallery.co.uk 048-90330920

There’s a hard, even harsh, surrealistic spin to Dermot Seymour’s realism. It has its origins in the earliest works in this retrospective, those made in Northern Ireland during the some of the bitterest years of the Troubles.

Seymour found himself living in a fractured, distorted world, and that is reflected in images that drily note the utter strangeness of what was apparently normal and everyday. When he moved to the west of Ireland in the late 1980s, he found a distinct if less acerbic surrealism in life at the edge of the edge of Europe.

Animals have always featured large in his paintings, as themselves and as allegorical players in sometimes cruel dramas. More recently he has made series of both animal and human portraits.

Seymour’s work is upfront, compelling and stark (it’s also often funny).

Can't see that? Catch this:A Rocky Road Crawford Art Gallery, Emmet Place, Cork Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Thurs 10am-8pm Until Jan 14 021-4273377