FUTURES is a European Photographic Platform that pools the resources and talent programmes of leading photography institutions across Europe in order to increase the capacity, mobility and visibility of its selected artists. By bringing together a wealth of resources and curatorial expertise, each talent selected by the FUTURES members gains access to an unprecedented network of professionals, markets and audiences.
Every year, FUTURES organises a series of events across Europe within each if its member countries. And every year they are all brought together at the FUTURES event Unseen Amsterdam. This year, Unseen takes places 19-22 September.
Thursday 4th May, we launched the tenth anniversary of PhotoIreland Festival with the opening of a new body of work by Luis Alberto Rodriguez, The People of the Mud. Luis was a Futures artist from last year, put forward by the Triennial of Photography Hamburg, he was further selected for a residency that took place at Cow House Studios, Co. Wexford. The event was opened by Menno Liauw of Vandejong, leading co-ordinator of Futures, and Ángel Luis González, Director and CEO of PhotoIreland Foundation.
During the event we announced the five Irish artists selected to join the rest of European talent in the platform. They are Dorje de Burgh, Megan Doherty, Aisling McCoy, Yvette Monahan, and George Voronov.
You can check out the full repository of Futures artists from last year, who will be later joined by the new artists from 2019 at futures-photography.com. Follow FUTURES on Facebook and Instagram – where you can follow which artists this year are joining the platform.
About the Artists
Dorje de Burgh
Dorje de Burgh is Dublin-born and based photographic artist practicing since 2012. His work is engaged in a dialogue with the dark poetics and reflexive potential of the photographic quotidian via oblique documentary, collage, writing and video. This practice draws upon lack, liminality, libidinal excess and the paradoxes of dematerialised (image) desire in a simulacral and schizoid semiocapitalist present.
He recently received a first-class Masters in Art in the Contemporary World from NCAD writing on the subject of Death and the Dematerialised Image.
Megan Doherty
Megan is a photographer hailing from Northern Ireland. Since graduating University of Ulster, Belfast in 2016, Doherty’s exhibited both locally and internationally and continues to build upon her current body of work, embodying ideas of youth, subculture, freedom and escape.
Doherty creates a darkly cinematic atmosphere to reflect the need for escapism within small-town life. In her native Derry, the Magnum Graduate Award 2016 shortlister creates a fictional, highly textured and colourful world in which recurring characters are played by friends. In her work, the scenarios are a combination of composed and documented, depicting the vibrant culture of young adulthood from a distinctly more female perspective.
Aisling McCoy
Aisling’s practice is concerned with how we inhabit. Her background as an architect is central to the work, which investigates the overlap between architecture and photography in how we construct meaning. Aisling is particularly interested in the ideological aspect of inhabitation and the role of both architecture and photography in constructing the ideal. Over the past years her art and teaching practice has focused on the physicality of the photograph; both as a method of translating place, and an object which generates its own space of meaning.
Yvette Monahan
Yvette Monahan is an Irish photographic artist, creating visual narratives, which reveal stories hidden deep in living places. In 2018, Yvette was also invited to create and contribute Octopolis for the 4th Winter Papers, Ireland’s annual anthology for the arts published by writer Kevin Barry and Olivia Smith. In 2017, Yvette was invited to create and exhibit Beyond the ninth wave, for TULCA Ireland by curator Matt Packer alongside other artists including Yoko Ono and Bob Quinn. Her previous work The thousand year old boy won the Gallery of Photography’s Solas Ireland Award and was further nominated for the Savills prize at the RHA BUE contemporary art fair and the Prix Pictet 2016, and exhibited internationally. Yvette self-published The time of dreaming the world awake as a monograph, with the work nominated for the 2015 Prix Pictet.
Yvette holds a MFA in Photography from the University of Ulster, Belfast and an MA in Geography and Economics from Trinity College Dublin.
George Voronov
George is a fine-art and documentary photographer currently based in Dublin, Ireland. He is a co-founder of Junior, a print-only photographic journal, and arts organisation that celebrates emerging Irish photography. He has completed his MFA in photography at the Belfast School of Art under the tutelage of Ken Grant and Donovan Wylie.
Thematically, his work seeks to uncover the surreal within the banal and the ordinary within the extraordinary. Recently, his projects have been focused on exploring the realms of youth culture and ritual. He balances his artistic practice with editorial and commercial commissions.
Futures Photography Platform is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, and PhotoIreland Festival is the Irish partner of the platform.
Currently, the platform has 10 founding members. The members are British Journal of Photography (UK), CAMERA (IT), Hyères Festival (FR), FOMU (BE), Fotofestiwal Lodz (PL), PHotoESPAÑA (ES), PhotoIreland (IR), Photo Romania Festival (RO), Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Centre (HU), and Triennial of Photography Hamburg (DE). The platform will recruit new members every year from countries around the world. Futures is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
Find out more about Futures Photography at futures-photography.com
