Temple Bar Gallery + Studios would like to congratulate Studio and Board member Isabel Nolan on her commission for the 61st International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, Dreamshook.
The Venice Art Biennale is the most important global platform for the exhibition of visual arts involving the public, members of civil society, individuals and institutions. It offers a unique opportunity for Irish artists to engage with international audiences. Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (TBG+S) wishes Nolan, curator Georgina Jackson, Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art, and producer Cian O’Brien, the best of luck with their presentation and wish them success with this significant achievement. The exhibition is commissioned by Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council and is on view at the Irish Pavilion, 09 May – 22 November 2026.
Responding to this year’s theme, In Minor Keys – selected by the late Koyo Kouoh, curator of La Biennale, the Irish Pavilion is entitled Dreamshook and emerges from Nolan’s examination of the fifteenth-century Venetian printer Aldus Manutus and his creation of the paperback. Nolan’s work varies from monumental to intimate in scale, allowing the audience to vacillate between wonder and unease, and grounding us in the artist’s question of “how to love a tumultuous world, an indifferent universe, and humans that are so often awful to each other.”
As a Six Year Studio Member and longstanding Board member, Nolan has made many contributions to TBG+S. In addition to Nolan’s representation, TBG+S would like to congratulate valued Studio member Rachel Fallon, Irish artist Alice Maher and studio alumnus Alan Phelan on their inclusion in In Minor Keys.
Isabel Nolan’s exhibitions are rooted in big subjects: cosmology and deep history; religion and mythology; mortality and love. Working across sculpture, textiles, paintings, drawings, photography and writing, Nolan responds to the fundamental question of how humans bring the world into meaning. Solo exhibitions include: Southwark Park Galleries, London (2026), Bluecoat, Liverpool, (2027), Château La Coste, Aix-en-Provence, France; London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE; Grazer Kunstverein, Graz; Mercer Union, Toronto; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. Her work has been exhibited at Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Artspace, Sydney; Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh; Daejeon Museum of Art, South Korea; and Beijing Art Museum of the Imperial City, Beijing. Biennales participation includes Lofoten International Arts Festival, Glasgow International, EVA International, Limerick, and a commission for the Liverpool Biennial 2025, curated by Marie-Anne McQuay. She is represented by the Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, and Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, New York.
Temple Bar Gallery + Studios invites applications from visual artists for a new opportunity in partnership with the Embassy of France in Ireland, Dublin City Council and the Embassy of Ireland, France.
Specially designed for Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, this organic cotton cap blends archival fragments, female wrestling messaging and noughties emoticons symbolically embracing collapse as a force for change.
Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (TBG+S) is pleased to announce Joanne Reid as the recipient of the Paul Robinson Studio Award 2026, proudly sponsored by leading law firm Arthur Cox LLP.
