Artworks 2022: Open Call

Kumbirai Makumbe, Drawing 1

This year’s ARTWORKS Open Submission invites submissions by artists who are examining questions of communication, language, the body and the speculative. Titled after a short story by speculative fiction writer Octavia Butler, Speech Sounds invites submissions that consider communication under a speculative lens, investigating disabled, modified, fictional, historical and non-human subjects as sites of reimagining communication and language.

Artists are invited to submit existing work in any medium for selection. The 2022 exhibition Speech Sounds will be presented in the galleries at VISUAL from 9 June – 31 August 2022. All artists selected will receive an artist’s fee. ARTWORKS 2022 is open to visual art in all mediums. This programme will be exhibited in the galleries at VISUAL.

The deadline for submissions is 31 March.

Verbal, written, signing and digital communication is at the heart of creating shared visions of the world, our sense of self, community and how we relate to each other. Speculative fiction, a type of storytelling which depicts realities other than our own, often deploys unconventional forms of communication to show new ways of relating to human and non-human subjects.

These stories often utilise bodily difference, modification or disability as devices to test the limits of language, creating situations that expand and rip apart our understanding of the body and how it functions. Speech Sounds will build on these themes to explore how artists adopt the strategies of the speculative in how the body contains and transmits communication and language.

The Artworks 2022 selector panel is made up of representatives from VISUAL, Carlow Arts Festival, guest curator Iarlaith Ní Fheorais and an external panellist. The exhibition is curated by Iarlaith Ni Fheorais and VISUAL Carlow and stems from Ni Fheorais’s Speech Sounds programme undertaken as Curator in Residence at VISUAL in 2021.

To submit piece(s) please complete this form.

To help you prepare your submission, the complete list of questions on the application form can be downloaded here.

Carlow Arts Festival is an annual multi-disciplinary arts festival which takes place in Carlow and is the first of the summer arts festivals in Ireland. 

We choose transformative art, diverse perspectives and inclusion for all in the act of discovery. We embrace the world of virtuosic artists to resonate, inspire and collaborate with our community. We champion accessibility while introducing our audiences to new art forms and cutting edge work. We create a vibrant temporary community that opens up horizons: creating space for discovery, delight and disruption. We insist that the arts are for everyone.

VISUAL Carlow is one of Ireland’s leading contemporary art spaces, an iconic civic arts centre in the heart of Carlow Town. It comprises world-class gallery spaces and performance facilities including the largest white-cube gallery space in the country – a massive 12 metres high – where it produces a programme high-quality national and international contemporary art. 

VISUAL is committed to understanding and valuing its local contexts and to developing Carlow’s creative potential. Through art and art making, it seeks ways to explore the world, creating situations for public enquiry and experiences which enrich, inspire and improve the everyday. VISUAL holds creativity, dignity and inclusion as its core values.

About the Selectors for ARTWORKS 2022

Benjamin Stafford joined VISUAL as Visual Arts Curator in 2022. Prior to this he worked in curatorial and directorial roles with the Arts Council, IMMA – the Irish Museum of Modern Art and Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin. He is particularly interested in sustained collaboration with artists on exhibitions, performances, and publications. Recent writing and editing include contributions to major monographs on Derek Jarman and Wolfgang Tillmans, amongst many others. He holds an MA in Art Research and Collaboration from IADT.

Iarlaith Ni Fheorais is a curator based between Ireland and the UK, currently an Independent Producer for Bridget O’Gorman and Ebun Sodipo with field:arts. She makes work as part of Liquid, exploring expressions of intimacy through exhibitions, live events, discussion and text. In winter 2021 she presented commissions by Day Magee, Panteha Abareshi and D Mortimer for Pathology of Energy as part of Arts and Disability Ireland’s Curated Space programme. She is also currently producing a new dance commission by Kat Hawkins for LIVE Collision and a toolkit on accessible exhibition-making and the commissioning of disabled artists. She is formerly an Assistant Curator at Tate Modern & Britain and Co-Director at Basic Space.

She is supported by Arts Council England through the Developing Your Creative Practice Award 2021 and the Agility Award by The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon, and is currently studying MA Art Praxis at the Dutch Art Institute.

Benjamin Perchet was appointed Artistic Director/CEO of Carlow Arts Festival in August 2021. Perchet is well known in the Irish scene for his leadership of Dublin Dance Festival from 2016 – 2021. He was previously Artistic Advisor for two major French institutions in Lyon: Maison de la Danse (2004 – 2015) and Biennale de la Danse (2008 – 2015). He has also been an Aerowaves partner, a founding board member of European Dancehouse Network (EDN) and a partner and management team member of Big Pulse Dance Alliance (BPDA), all of these networks and projects being co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the EU.

David Francis Moore is a cultural producer, arts programmer and educator. He is currently the Programme Director and Executive Producer at Carlow Arts Festival. Prior to this he was the programme manager at VISUAL where he led the artist support and development programme which focused on institutionally embedded modes of support that better served the long-term sustainability of artists and their practices. David also produced ambitious community engagement and outreach programmes that sought to embed artists practice on a local level and reach new audiences. From 2018 – 2021, David led on VISUAL’s involvement in the Arts & Humanities Entrepreneurship Hub Project, an EU funded project established to improve the entrepreneurial capacity of Arts & Humanities graduates through dedicated support and training. His book ‘Our Thriving Tribe; Exploring Entrepreneurship in the Arts’ launched in 2021 and features contributions from a variety of emerging and established Irish artists, practitioners and arts workers from across the sector. He is the former chairperson of the Stroller Network, Ireland’s largest consortium of Art Centres and is currently a board member of Theatre Forum Ireland.