Ireland’s International Festival of Photography & Image Culture.
Under the title #OpeningTheGates, the 13th edition of PhotoIreland Festival presents the most comprehensive overview on the History and Practice of Photography in Ireland to date, running 7th July to 25th August 2022 in various locations, with the main venue at The Printworks, Dublin Castle.
The main exhibition Images Are All We Have traces the thematic development of the discipline and contextualises the historical background, bringing together the diverse and socially engaged set of contemporary art practices that define Irish Photography today. This survey exhibition on the discipline involves artists spanning several generations, practices, and backgrounds, and will include video installations by Alan Butler and Eamonn Doyle, alongside a screening room presenting a schedule of video works. The exhibition also assimilates the works of this year’s selected RADAR artists — PhotoIreland’s Research and Development Artist Residency drawing from all Photography degrees of Ireland, from Diploma to MA, showcases photographic projects by five recent graduates.
The extensive presentation is accompanied by an exhibition On the Irish Photobook, a reading room providing the broadest presentation of Irish photobooks, drawn from the PhotoIreland Collection as much as others both public and private.
PhotoIreland frames this ambitious exhibition within the second instalment of the Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland — a public-facing research project run by PhotoIreland since 2019 that aims to investigate the ideal prototype space to actively engage with Visual Culture and Critical Thinking today. Spread across a generous 2000m², visitors can access a set of exhibitions and video installations introducing many works, some well-known and some never exhibited before, while trailing along a history that sees the transformation of a technology into a fully matured artistic practice.
Four more exhibitions complement the official offer: New Irish Works, and solo shows premiering new work by Daragh Soden, Letizia Lopreiato, and Brian Magee.
The triennial project New Irish Works returns for a fourth edition with selected works by Audrey Gillespie, Bryony Dunne, Cian Burke, Jialin Long, Mark Duffy, Martin Cregg, Martin Seeds, Pauline Rowan, Róisín White, and Shia Conlon. The project invites an international jury to identify and select ten notable works, aiming to represent and promote the growing diversity of contemporary photographic practices in Ireland.
Daragh Soden’s Ladies & Gentlemen brings to public view for the first time a new body of work by the Dublin born artist; it is a subversive series of large format portraits that raises questions around gender roles, photographer-subject relationships and the performativity of identity.
Letizia Lopreiato presents The Timelapse – From the Front, a pansensorial installation, depicting the artist’s journey of acceptance of her own visual impairment through art.
In his latest work, Brian Magee offers a thoughtful glimpse to his daughter’s struggle getting to grips with life’s finite nature and its everyday challenges.
The Critical Academy provides a series of Think Tanks looking at historical developments from Photo History to Arts practice, researching a Photography museum of the 21st century, investigating Empathy in Photography, and strengthening the sector with conversations around Artists rights. All this alongside engaging talks, curatorial and artists tours, and many other events.
During the festival, OVER Journal will reveal its long time coming new online presence. The event will inform of new developments and updated strategies as much as share tips for submissions, and a programme of events will be announced.
In producing this edition, PhotoIreland has consulted and collaborated with many key individuals, organisations, archives and repositories. Together, they constitute the broad and rich ecosystem that supports Photography in Ireland.
The rather unusual inward look of this edition of Ireland’s international Photography festival brings together PhotoIreland’s ongoing research on the subject initiated in 2017, and it comes to celebrate the discipline and all its agents, from the artists to the organisations involved. A new online resource will provide unlimited access to the research.
List of Exhibitions and Events
Images Are All We Have, The Printworks, Dublin Castle, 8 July—25 August
Ladies & Gentlemen, Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, 9 July- 7 August
Video Works, The Printworks, Dublin Castle, 8 July—25 August
Anna’s Notes, The Printworks, Dublin Castle, 8 July—25 August
The Timelapse — From the Front, The Printworks, Dublin Castle, 8 July—25 August
Made in Dublin, The Printworks, Dublin Castle, 8 July—25 August
On Exactitude in Science, The Printworks, Dublin Castle, 8 July—25 August
TWO, Eamonn Doyle, The Library Project, 16 July—28th August
STILL, SO Fine Art Editions, Dublin, 10—30 July
girls girls girls, Lismore Castle Arts, Co. Waterford, 2 Apr—30 Oct 2022
The Tower, Rua Red, Dublin, 27 May—27 August
Art Forms in Nature, The Glucksman, Co. Cork, 7 April—10 July
Meat and Potatoes, Crawford Art Gallery, Co. Cork, 16 July—6th Nov
I Am Sitting in a Room, Solstice Arts Centre, Co. Meath, 18 Jun—5 Aug
Bones in the Attic, Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, 11 Aug—30 Oct
Loose on the Streets, Karen Browett, The Darkroom, Dublin, 25 August—7 September
Events
Artists Talk Series: RADAR Artists 2022, Ayesha Ahmad, Daniel Breen, Ryan Allen, and Sarah Navan, Sat 20 August
Family Cyanotype Workshop, Sat 9 July
Ireland Creates: Live, 13 August
Photobook Launch: Naïve, Sat 9 July, The Printworks
Photobook Launch: The Drift /// Parallax, 25th August
Photobook Launch: Next Exit, 14 July, The Printworks
Poetry and Photography: In Conversation. Writer Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan talks to photographers Michelle Moloney and Letizia Lopreiato about the connection between poetry and photography, 9 July, The Printworks
Photo Walk, Aidan Kelly, Ailbhe Greaney, Aisling Keavey, Ala Buisir, Alisha Doody, Amy O’Riordan, Audrey Gillespie, Austin Hearne, Basil Al-Rawi, Becks Butler, Bernadette Keating, Chad Alexander, Clare Gallagher, Daragh Soden, Emma Campbell, Emma O’Brien, Ethna Rose O’Regan, Gary Byrne, Jamin Keogh, Jan McCullough, Jean Curran, Jeanette Lowe, Jialin Long, Kate Nolan, Kate Swift, Mark McGuinness, Olamide Ojegbenro, Paul Gaffney, Pauline Rowan, Rachel Glass, Richard Gosnold, Shane Lynam, and Sinéad Curran, Fri 15 July. Amy O’Riordan, Billy Woods, Bryony Dunne, Daniel Breen, David Copeland, David Killeen, David Monahan, Debbie Castro, Diego Fabro, Dorje de Burgh, Enda Burke, Fiona-Louise Ntidendereza, Gerry Blake, Helio Leon, Jill Quigley, Kety Duran, Mark Duffy, Martin Seeds, Myles Shelly, Niamh Barry, Ruby Wallis, Ryan Allen, Sarah Navan, Seán Hillen, Sibéal Riordan, Steven Nestor, Tessy Ehiguese, Thomas Hall, Vera Ryklova, Vukasin Nedeljkovic, and Zoe Hamill, Sat 16 July.
Think Tank – Photography: An Empathetic Gesture?,25 August
Think Tank – On Histories II, 29 July
Think Tank – On Histories I, 22 July
Artists Talk Series I, Jean Curran and David Flood, 9 July
