Spring School: Performing for the Camera with Austin Hearne

This year’s Spring School, Performing for the Camera, is designed and facilitated by visual artist Austin Hearne. Participants will come together to learn and gain insight into themes of performance and photography through exploring methodologies used within the artist’s practice.

Together participants will consider how to present and frame a created persona for the camera and ultimately how that will be expressed in a finished photographic print. This will enable participants to explore identity, alter egos and the role of the subject and photographer as a means of artistic communication and expression. Through gesture, body language, facial expression, costume and masking, there will be an opportunity to create a character and present it to the camera. To support this, we will imagine the voice of the created alter ego, through words, sentences and compositional tone in letter form.

Each week will see a different activity, talk, discussion or workshop, facilitated by the artist and invited guests. The Spring School is an opportunity to expand your ideas of art practice, experiment with making art, learn with others within the TBG+S community.

Spring School takes place every Tuesday evening from 6:00pm to 7:00pm, over four weeks from 9 – 30 April. This is an in person free programme for adults taking place at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. No previous experience needed but a willingness to engage in group work and discussion is essential.

For full details of each session, guest facilitators and course schedule please download the PDF.

Austin Hearne is a multi-disciplinary artist from Dublin, living in Co. Wexford and a recent studio artist at TBG+S. His practice is rooted in photography and draws on his experience of being from a family of painters and decorators. He uses the 'stuff' of this industry to make works and installations. Performing for the camera in parallel with epistolary modes (letter writing) enables a conjuring up characters and narratives that serve as the bedrock to his speculative-led exhibitions. Figurative elements within his practice have been influenced by a wide range of photographic media within the history of art and popular culture, namely photo-journalism, iconography, gender performance and fashion editorials.

He holds an MFA from NCAD (2016). Whispers won Best Irish Short at the Gaze film festival, 2022. Solo exhibitions include Requiem For Raymo, RHA Gallery, 2022-2023; Slabs II and Whispers, Mermaid Arts Centre,2023; Confessions, Lismore Castle Arts, 2023; Love Letters to Cardinal Raymo, Gorey School of Art, 2021; Slabs, The Complex, 2021; Group exhibitions include Mysterious Ways, The Glucksman, 2024; Weartfetishists, 2022; PhotoIreland Festival, 2022; Speech Sounds, Visual Carlow, 2022. Austin is a founding member and one half of the experimental queer goth music act Satin Shadow; they have released 3 albums to date.

Image description: A cropped portrait of a seated masked figure in costume. They are wearing a purple silk papal hat, and a black and white marbled layer of fabric which is draped around their neck. A yellow piece of fabric with two eye holes cut into its surface is draped over their face. In the background there is a colourful set of printed curtains and painted stonework.