Revising the Rainbow with Diana Bamimeke, Brendan Fox and Hannah Tiernan

In conversation with curator and writer Diana Bamimeke, Brendan Fox and Hannah Tiernan, co-ordinators of the REWIND << FASTFORWARD >> RECORD initiative, will explore some of the rationales and methodologies behind the project. Bamimeke will discuss their current research “critico-production”, a framework through which artists working across different media and disciplines are invited to consider the role of criticism and respond in their respective fields.

In person and ticketed event in the Project Spaces. To book tickets click here

This session presents a range of responses to the subject of ‘Outing the Past’. Our guest looks at the troubled histories of LGBT+ people spanning turbulent periods in Irish history that saw a concerted campaign to police and repress same-sex desire, resulting in hundreds of gay men being incarcerated for homosexual offenses and same sex desires. From past to present, our guests address the legacy and reparation of these laws on lives of LGBT+ people, offering reflection from a visual art perspective.

Featured Responses
Lecture, 30min : Seán Kissane, Curator Exhibitions, IMMA, introduces his recent research on the emergence of Queer subjectivities in Irish visual art from 1939 onwards.
Lecture, 30min: Kieran Rose, LGBT+ activist and campaigner, discusses his research as active member of the Department of Justice Working Group for the State to disregard of criminal convictions before gay law reform in 1993. Rose shares new archival research and draws attention to the experiences of those impacted as well as the many that emigrated. In doing so, Rose calls for the greater need to commemorate those who resisted some of the most inhospitable decades of the last century in Ireland.
In Conversation, 40min: Aoife Banks, Alan Phelan and Brian Crowley explores queer history through artistic practice, this discussion will explore historical themes from LGBTQ+ history and how they have been explored and translated through artistic practices.

In-person and ticketed event in the Lecture Room. To book tickets click here.

An in-person tour in the galleries, Seán Kissane, curator of The Narrow Gate of the Here-and-Now: Queer Embodiment, will conduct a guided tour of the exhibition for RFR group that is also open to the public.

POSTPONED until further notice

Hannah Tiernan – RFR Programme Manager
Hannah Tiernan is a researcher, writer and visual artist based in Dublin. Her key area of interest is contemporary Irish LGBTQ+ history and expanding voices within the Irish LGBTQ+ community. She is the Editorial Assistant with GCN Magazine (Gay Community News) and has also been appointed to oversee the digitisation of GCN’s archive. Since March 2021 she has been the editor of the Queer-in-Progress. Timeline: Online Archive, an initiative to map the expanded narratives within the canon of Irish queer history; focusing on lesbian, feminist, female-identifying, trans, bi and HIV/AIDS histories. From 2018 to 2020, Hannah was a researcher on the ACTIVE ARCHIVE – SLOW INSTITUTION initiative with Project Arts Centre and was the lead researcher for the Queer-in-Progress. Timeline display in March 2020. In 2019 she authored ‘Foul, Filthy, Stinking Muck’: the LGBT theatre of Project Arts Centre, 1966 – 2000, and curated and hosted the ‘Foul, Filthy, Stinking Muck’ symposium. She is also the creator of the Ranelagh/Rathmines Queer Walking Tour, designed in conjunction with Ranelagh Arts.

Brendan Fox – RFR Curator, Workshop Deviser
Brendan Fox is an independent curator, artist, writer and Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) facilitator. He holds a BA in Fine Art from NCAD and received the Global Undergraduate Award in 2012. In 2020 he received an MFA in Art in the Contemporary World from NCAD which focused on the intersection of contemporary arts practice and community. He was project co-curator at Nag Gallery, Dublin, resident curator at Talbot Gallery, Dublin and is the Co-founder, Director/Curator of Foundation Arts in association with Offaly County Council and IMMA. He has devised numerous gallery and offsite exhibitions and has curated from the national collection at IMMA. He has been invited curator at LSAD and NCAD. He is the instigator of Games for Artists and Non-Artists which took place at IMMA in 2020 and saw him receiving the Arts in Participation Bursary Award from the Arts Council of Ireland. He is on the steering panel for – Erasmus+ Project – ” Building resilience and intercultural competencies in refugees and asylum seekers through theatre techniques”.

Fox is the founder of the Museum of Everyone (MOE), a multidisciplinary platform for artists and community-led initiatives with a focus on inclusion, diversity and active collaborations. MOE received the Dublin City Council Arts Office Incubation Space Award 2021-2022. 2021 sees him devising a major exhibition in association with Offaly Arts Office which received the In the Open | Faoin Spéir: an Arts Council funded programme. Fox is currently devising projects in the UK, Italy and USA. He has facilitated talks/workshops with the RHA, Goethe Institute, NCAD, IMMA, LSAD, Temple Bar Gallery +Studios, UCD and Trinity College Dublin at The Innovation Academy and VAI. He is currently on the writing panel for VAN Magazine and is a National Arts Council Peer Panelist.

Aoife Banks – RFR Assistant Curator, Project Administrator
Aoife Banks is an independent curator based in Dublin. Bank’s curatorial practice explores contemporary visual cultures through a queer and decolonial praxis. She was most recently appointed Emerging Curator in Residence, with Kilkenny Arts Office. She was a recipient of Pallas Projects’ Artist Initiated Award in 2018, for which she curated the group exhibition and public engagement programme ‘The Queeratorial’. She has since curated multiple exhibitions and managed public engagement programmes for cultural institutions across Ireland. Banks received her joint BA in Fine Art and Visual Culture in 2018 and MFA in Visual Culture, Art in the Contemporary World, in 2020 at the National College of Art and Design.

Diana Bamimeke
Diana Bamimeke is an independent curator and writer from Dublin. Currently, their practice interest lies in the curation and facilitation of socially-engaged art, with a special focus on criticality and public & community engagements (activism, workshops). Collaboration is key to their curatorial work.

Stefan Fae (Stephen Quinn)
Stefan Fae is a writer and performer based in Dublin. His work explores Irish queer identity through a kaleidoscope of drag, burlesque, physical theatre, and alternative cabaret.

Kate Drinane
Kate Drinane is the co-founder of Queer Culture Ireland, a national network of artists, organisations and cultural institutions, aimed at supporting and promoting LGBTQ+ cultural representation. She is also the Tours, Talks, Training & Interpretation Officer for the National Gallery of Ireland.

Brian Crowley
Brian Crowley is the Collections Curator for two OPW-run museums, Kilmainham Gaol Museum and the Pearse Museum. He is the former chair of the Irish Museums Association and the author of Patrick Pearse, A Life in Pictures. Most recently his article, ‘Queering Kilmainham: uncovering LGBTQIA+ stories in a national shrine’ was published in the 2020 edition of Studia Hibernica.

Izzy Kamikaze
Izzy Kamikaze is a life-long LGBTQ+ and human rights activist.

Seán Kissane
Seán Kissane is Curator of Exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Dublin. He describes his practice as ‘curating the edges’, producing deeply researched exhibitions focussed on the work of female and queer artists whose work has been critically neglected. These projects have included major touring exhibitions such as the retrospectives for Derek Jarman, Leonora Carrington, and Mary Swanzy. In 2016 he presented the critically acclaimed ‘Patrick Hennessy: De Profundis’, the first queer reading of Irish modernism. He is currently a PhD candidate at Gradcam, TU Dublin; undertaking research into queer art exhibited in Ireland during and after the Second World War examining how some Irish artists presented divergent images of masculinity that countered prevailing orthodoxies.

Dr Patrick McDonagh
Patrick McDonagh is the author of Gay and Lesbian Activism in the Republic of Ireland, 1973-93 (Bloomsbury Academic). His research primarily focuses on gay and lesbian activism in the latter half of the twentieth century in Ireland. He obtained his PhD in History from the European University Institute in 2019.

Alan Phelan
Alan Phelan is a multidisciplinary visual artist and researcher whose practice often unearths queer histories and presents previously hidden narratives in contemporary contexts.

Kieran Rose
Kieran Rose LGBT+ activist and is as active member of the Department of Justice Working Group for the State to disregard of criminal convictions before gay law reform in 1993.