• Sean Kissane
  

• Bassam Al-Sabah
  
• Alan Butler
  
• Jennifer Mehigan
  
• David Farrell
  
• Abigail O’Brien
  
• Dominic Hawgood
  
• Alex Prager
  

• 
  Autumn 2025
  Volume 42. No. 3

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For PhotoIreland, the move into a new, purpose-built venue is significant. The venue’s name, the International Centre for the Image, signals a departure from an earlier, almost exclusive, focus on photography. This is marked by the inclusion in its inaugural exhibition of artists such as Colin Martin, whose academically executed paintings are inspired by digital simulation and gaming. Similarly, sculptural practices from Anna Ehrenstein, or Bassam Issa Al-Sabah and Jennifer Mehigan, signal a curatorial shift toward a broader and more generous definition of the image.

The exhibition ‘Foreword’ takes its title from a literary form. A foreword appears at the beginning of a book and is usually written by someone other than the author, offering context or framing how the work should be read. In art catalogues, it often serves as the institutional voice, situating the exhibition within a curatorial or critical tradition. Adopting ‘Foreword’ as the title of an exhibition is unusual, as exhibitions are usually presented as complete statements; here, the term raises questions about what is being proposed and what is still to come. The curators, Ángel González and Julia Gelezova, introduce a wide thematic field, bringing together works that address the politics of representation, postcolonial legacies, the climate crisis, gender and social justice, and the entanglement of image culture with digital and archival technologies.

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