Overview
Community, self-organisation and open networks are central to Sarah Pierce’s practice. She works over long periods on projects with many parts and, invariably, she calls upon others to join her in this work. Since 2003, Pierce has used the term The Metropolitan Complex to describe this project, characterised by forms of gathering, both historical examples and those initiated by her. The processes of research and presentation that are undertaken demonstrate a continual renegotiation of the terms for making art and the complexities of categorising, archiving, collecting and instituting.
Drives in her work include radical pedagogies, dissent and self-determination, unofficial archives, affinities and student culture. Pierce is keenly invested in how research operates through institutions. For those whose work mobilises through precarity, grief and colonial violence research can be a dirty word. How to disclose what is excluded, untranslatable, unanswerable, and dispossessed? To insist as she does that research is performative, socially organised and always unfinished is to make visible a whole set of gestures that are not exclusively hers.
Visit Sarah Pierce’s website here
Artworks by Sarah Pierce
Residency Profile
Dwell Here: One Year Studio Residency
January – December 2025
Dwell Here offers participants a simple proposition: to commit to this time and place while thinking deeply about its urgencies. Together we are curious to learn what can be activated or challenged through the process of dwelling. IMMA encourages reflection across the following themes to consider geographical, historical, political and cultural concepts of Ireland as a starting point to expand and connect international contexts through similarities and differences:
Technologies of Peace – to consider commemorative landscapes and memories of peace (as a dream, movement, or value) while generating perspectives on sustainable coexistence.
The Irish Paradigm – Welcomes artistic research that creates intimacy and connections, while celebrating the perceived agility and freedoms of operating on the periphery. As a small island on the edge of Europe, Ireland often has a challenging relationship with ‘the centre’.
The Museum as a Site of Vibration – consider how the museum and site can create new vibrations and rhythms within the built legacy of empire. How can museums make visible cultural shifts, including erased, censored or marginalised histories, as well as sustainability, planetary care, sharing and hospitality.