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.
Use this handy day-by-day calendar to find out what PhotoIreland Festival 2022 offers you each day. Download A Young Person’s Guide to the Exhibition, a guide for all, made in consultation with alumni of The Ark’s Children’s Council. If you want to stay tuned, subscribe and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Read all the details about Launch Week →
*Due to circumstances beyond our control, the main venue at The Printworks will have to close on August 26th, 27th and 28th, making the last day of the show August 25th.