Director’s Welcome
232 Artists, 47 Exhibitions, 56 Venues, 25 Events,
+180 Publishers and +800 books.
In 2013, we celebrate the fourth edition of the PhotoIreland Festival. This year we aim to highlight the growing numbers of emerging practitioners in and from Ireland who despite being recognised and published abroad in equal measures may still be struggling to find the right local channels by which to get noticed. This unclassified and unnamed wave of artists has been gathering numbers and strength over the last decade and are pushing their way into international contemporary photography with great success.
Well-informed and well read, some are graduates of third level programmes established and taught by the previous generation of Irish photographers, while others have come from other lands to call this their artistic home. If a time must be found to celebrate their efforts, let this year be it. We have set out to open a conversation around their practice and bring attention to it because it is part of what currently defines us, and it is certainly our future.
The result of this process is New Irish Works, our main exhibition this year. Conceived as a multi-city experience, it offers the selected projects of 25 artists in and from Ireland throughout seven venues in Dublin, Limerick and Cork. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication of the same title, kindly sponsored and printed by Castle Print, Galway. It is an ambitious exhibition that could not have been produced without the help and support of all our funders, partners and sponsors, and the effort and passion of many individuals, as much as the artists themselves – and we all hope you enjoy it.
We have two very exciting exhibitions at The Copper House Gallery, in Dublin: David Galjaard’s Concresco, and Cristina De Middel’s The Afronauts. Both relatively unknown this time last year, they rapidly gained international recognition on the strength of how their projects translated to the photobook format and its specific narrative. To have these two artists in Dublin, at The Copper House Gallery, is an exceptional opportunity. Do not miss it.
An Uncertain State, the keynote exhibition at the Gallery of Photography Ireland, investigates how photography is responding to the crisis. It presents the works of the Aslyum Archive, Eoin O Conaill, Doug DuBois, David Farrell, Kim Haughton, Paddy Kelly, Lauren McGookin, Paul Nulty, Pete Smyth, and Una Spain. There is a very interesting programme of talks to accompany the show, involving key figures in academia.
The featured exhibitions include a selection of key shows in July, in Dublin, Limerick and Cork: Cruel And Unusual, Sirius Arts Centre; The Artist’s Eye: Photographic Portraits Of Artists, The Lewis Glucksman Gallery; the 183rd RHA Annual Exhibition; Willie Doherty, Secretion, The Annex, IMMA @ NCH; Starting Over, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios; Maurice Gunning, Source, DanceHouse; and Experiments With Photography, Stoney Road Press. We would like to acknowledge the hard work that has gone into each one of these, most of it behind the scenes, by passionate and dedicated professionals – it is our intention to highlight them, and invite you to enjoy them.
The 30 exhibitions in the CANON Open Programme offer a varied array of works, from Hugh McElveen to Marian Schmidt, and exciting venues like Faber Studios, The Chocolate Factory, Siteation, and the New Art Gallery. We are delighted to include the University of Ulster’s Photography MFA show, at South Studios; it is certainly an outstanding exhibition.
This year, we have placed special attention on developing the Summer Campus into ‘a space to converse, reflect and create’. You will enjoy the latest photobooks, magazines and fanzines, plus our modest yet mind-boggling collection of over 800 contemporary publications from The Library Project. The 6th Fotobook Festival Kassel, brings for the first time to Ireland, and all the way from Germany, the 50 shortlisted books from their international open submission. Also for the first time, the best works from POPCAP ‘13 prize for Contemporary African Photography will be exhibited in Dublin, Limerick and Cork. The Summer Campus includes a great selection of talks, workshops and films, all listed in this catalogue.
Screened at the IFI, Dublin, Cathy Pearson’s ‘Get The Picture’, explores the career of John G Morris, former Picture Editor for Life Magazine, The New York Times and executive editor of Magnum Photos. It is a fascinating insight into seventy years of a professional career that saw him dealing with the most important photojournalists, and how it affected his worldview.
Personally, I could not understand this world without the Arts, so I believe it is essential to share efforts to support them, especially in a country with a wealth of creativity like Ireland. It would be great if we all joined the energy generated by The National Campaign for the Arts and help preserve our hard earned cultural assets.
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to all those individuals and organisations who over the last four years have been supporting the festival, to our funders, sponsors and partners, in particular the Arts Council of Ireland and the city councils of Dublin, Limerick and Cork. Also thanks to all those artists and organisations participating this year.
