Interview with Rachel Enright Murphy, TBG+S Recent Graduate Award Recipient 2025

This short film visits artist Rachel Enright Murphy in her studio as she prepares for the launch of her recently developed live artwork No Obligation (2026) which explores how intimate movement becomes productive labour. No Obligation (2026) is on view at Dublin Fringe Festival 2026. Buy tickets here.

Shot during a preparatory workshop, the film offer's insight into the development of the work. Produced with the consultation of an intimacy coordinator and a legal-creative consultant, the piece follows an acting contract which is read aloud while two actors perform within their contractual obligations. The performance includes a series of intimate exercises where the boundaries of improvised movement become legal or ethical requirements. No Obligation highlights and explores legal loopholes, standardisation and semantic arguments which become prompts for an uncanny, tender and visually striking performance.

No Obligation was made by Rachel Enright Murphy during her TBG+S Recent Graduate Residency Award, of which she was the recipient in 2025. The TBG+S Recent Graduate Residency Award offers a unique and substantial professional development opportunity to emerging artists including a large free studio for one year, an artist bursary, and a variety of institutional supports, to an artist who has graduated from an undergraduate degree in the past three years. It assists artists in focusing their studio practices at a crucial point in their careers.

Rachel Enright Murphy makes text-based artworks using video, sound, performance and printed material. Her work creates semantic or phonetic experiments that act as intimate misreadings of legal agreements, documented events and scientific papers. She often collaborates with others through theatrical scripting and production practices to explore autonomy, spectatorship and sexual subjectivity. Previous exhibitions, residencies and performances include: Clerical Error, Ormond Studios (2025), SIM Reykjavik (2024), and Fly Floor, The Complex Gallery (2023). She holds a BA in Fine Art Media from the National College of Art and Design and her practice is supported by The Arts Council. Rachel is a Residential Awardee of Firestation artist Studios (2026/27).

No Obligation is at Dublin Fringe Festival 2026, 09 — 13 September 2026. Tickets can be purchased here.

This film was made by Evanna Devine and produce by TBG+S. It features actors Cian Malin and Molly Murphy Hazzard alongside a soundtrack by Dan Montague O'Brien. The filmed workshop was in collaboration with intimacy coordinator Sinead Cassidy Holt and producer Sinéad Gallagher.