The International Centre for the Image, opened in July in the North Wall district of Dublin at Coopers Cross, is a cultural partnership between PhotoIreland and the international investment company Kennedy Wilson.
The International Centre for the Image, opened in July in the North Wall district of Dublin at Coopers Cross, is a cultural partnership between PhotoIreland and the international investment company Kennedy Wilson. Best known for its annual festival, PhotoIreland has been promoting photography and visual culture since 2010 through a diverse range of activities, from its Library Project bookshop to the OVER journal.
The spacious new venue in the city’s redeveloped docklands is a customised ten-thousand-square-foot basement area off a Tardis-like entrance at ground level, and includes exhibition areas, a library, storage and artists’ studios. Says PhotoIreland’s director, Ángel Luis González Fernández: ‘Our ambition is to create a cultural destination that attracts leading international and Irish artists, provides workspace to emerging local artists and connects with the community and its rich history.’
Photography in Ireland languished for decades on the margins, but its significance as art form and practice was advanced with the arrival in 1978 of the Gallery of Photography (now Photo Museum Ireland), and major photography shows since then at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Royal Hibernian Academy and the National Library’s Photographic Archive.
The new centre is an impressive addition, and for its launch it ran a two-day event, ‘Rethinking the Image’, on the value and place of the image in contemporary art practices and wider society. Its inaugural exhibition features seventeen artists across photography, video, installation and immersive media.
Acting as a prologue within the show, Penelope Umbrico’s seminal Sunset Portraits from Flickr Sunsets, seen here in Ireland for the first time, is a startling yet reflective encounter with an obsessive and cliché image culture. Supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, the exhibition runs until 14 September.
Stephanie McBride
‘Poster Boys’ at the National Print Museum in Dublin’s Beggars Bush is an exhibition of fifty-six original Abbey Theatre posters from the 1970s and 1980s.
Growing up in Derry, Locky Morris lived under the kind of hyper-surveillance that has gradually become the norm worldwide.
There were 2,700 submissions to this year’s Royal Ulster Academy (RUA) exhibition, from which 353 were selected.