Sarah Pierce
Sarah Pierce is an artist based in Dublin. Since 2003 she has used the term The Metropolitan Complex to describe her project, characterised by forms of gathering in historical examples and those she initiates. The processes of research and presentation that Sarah Pierce undertakes demonstrate a broad understanding of cultural work and a continual renegotiation of the terms for making art, the potential for dissent and self-determination. Sarah Pierce works with installation, performance, archives, talks and papers, often opening these up to the personal and the incidental in ways that challenge received histories and forms of making. Her sources include civil rights movements and student culture, the historical legacies of figures such as El Lissitzky, August Rodin, and Eva Hesse, and theories of community and love founded in Maurice Blanchot and Georges Bataille.
Sarah Pierce’s work has shown widely in the EU, US and Canada with major exhibtions including Positions #2 at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and We are the Center at CCS Hessel Museum, Annandale-on-Hudson (both 2016), The Artist and the State at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2015), Push and Pull at Tate Modern and MuMOK Vienna (2010), and Nought to Sixty at the ICA London (2009). In 2014 she presented a major solo exhibition in three-parts, Lost Illusions/Illusions perdues, developed jointly with Walter Phillips Gallery Banff AL, Mercer Union Toronto ON, and SBC Galerie Montreal QB. Other solo presentations include: No Title curated by Sara Greavu at the Centre of Contemporary Art, Derry (2017), Pathos of Distance curated by Donal Maguire at the National Gallery or Ireland (2016), Monogamy, an exhibition by Gerard Byrne and Sarah Pierce, curated by Tirdad Zolghadr at the CCS Bard College, New York (2013); The Artist Talks, curated by Emily Pethick at The Showroom, London (2012); 1961-2011, curated by Mark Sladen at the Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; and The Meaning of Greatness curated by Grant Watson at Project Arts Centre (2006). She has participated in major international biennials including Glasgow International with Chapter 13 (2018), Eva International (2016, 2012), Lyon Biennial (2011), International Sinop Biennial (2010), the Moscow Biennial (2007), and in 2005, Pierce represented Ireland in a group exhibition at the 51st Venice Biennale.