Temple Bar Gallery + Studios announces Guest Curators 2022

RGKSKSRG will curate Oh My Demigod, a group exhibition that re-reads and re-tells the epic Irish story of the Táin Bó Cúailnge, particularly the role played by the young Cú Chulainn, and re-situates it in today’s cultural landscape. This revisiting takes place through a kaleidoscopic merging of Louis le Brocquy’s iconic tapestries, with three contemporary practices: choreographer Oona Doherty’s honed embodiment of aggression and conflict shot through the lens of filmmaker Luca Truffarelli, Michelle Doyle’s raw anarchic sound work via Rising Damp, and Farouk Alao’s hyper-contemporary take on how we project attitude, persona, legacy.

RGKSKSRG is the paired curatorial practice of Rachael Gilbourne and Kate Strain. Based between Aughrim, Achill, and Dublin, RGKSKSRG commission, present and contextualise contemporary art. Through linking with sites, communities and institutions, RGKSKSRG works to create new contexts for engaged encounters between artists and audiences. These contexts involve new commissions, solo and group exhibitions, live events, curatorial residencies, talks, interviews, performances, texts, and artworks hosted online or in real life.

Katherine Murphy will curate Galalith, the first solo exhibition in Ireland by artist Lauren Gault. Gault’s responsive sculptural practice engages with a wide range of fields including agriculture and the shifting perception of ‘rural’, biomaterials and archaeology. Within the exhibition she will present an ambitious and expanded staging of her ongoing research involving agri-relations and agroecology, matter inter-connectivity, and agency within unstable micro and macro environmental systems. Gault will employ museological analysis techniques, such as ‘micro-fading’ which gives a tangible visualisation of a material’s future state. Within the work, Gault will interrupt the natural flow of time, indicating the possibility of alternative or suspected futures, whilst raising questions around agency, potential for change, conservation and loss.

Katherine Murphy is a Scottish independent curator and producer based in Glasgow. With a background in contemporary philosophy, she has a passion for developing expanded forms of feminist artist and curatorial practices through a process of unfolding. For the past 10 years she has worked with a range of prominent artists, art institutions, museums, international festivals and not-for-profit organisations to deliver ambitious exhibitions, commissions and events. Recently she's been developing the unfolding project, working closely with artists to manifest and realise feminist independent, sustainable practices in Scotland.

Oh My Demigod and Lauren Gault’s Galalith, with take place at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios in March and May 2022.

The selection process took place following a competitive open call, which was assessed by the TBG+S Curatorial Team, with a TBG+S Board Member and Ireland-based curator.