The live readings take place on Sunday 3 September in Phoenix Park, as part of Sarah Pierce’s Shelter Bread & Freedom (2021). A community of readers made of individuals who have migrated to Dublin present short, chosen texts to read aloud in their home languages. The texts range from personal letters and diaries to manifestoes, poems, lyrics, and other printed matter. The readings are not translated, and the audience is invited to gather and listen without (necessarily) understanding the languages spoken every day by people who live in Dublin.

This event marks the closing day of the exhibition Sarah Pierce: Scene of the Myth, guest curated by Rike Frank and the European Kunsthalle at IMMA. The event is part of the artwork Shelter Bread & Freedom (2021) featured in the exhibition at IMMA. The artwork focuses on the structure of the shelter in the People’s Garden in Dublin’s Phoenix Park and incorporates a series of banners scaled to the shelter’s interior with patterns, cutting and sewing by Aoife McLaughlin and shibori dying and fraying by Clíona McLoughlin. A zine with texts by Donna Rose, Grace O’Boyle and Sarah Pierce is available to read online at here.

Please note this event takes place in an outdoor setting. Please wear appropriate clothing and footwear. You are welcome to bring your own picnic blanket or seating. The event will operate with a leave no trace ethic.

Location & Meeting Point: the shelter in the People’s Flower Garden at the Phoenix Park, Dublin 8. See location details here.

Since 2003, Sarah Pierce has used the term The Metropolitan Complex to describe her project, characterised by forms of gathering, both historical examples and those she initiates. The processes of research and presentation that she undertakes demonstrate a broad understanding of cultural work and a continual renegotiation of the terms for making art, the potential for dissent, and self-determination. Pierce’s work has shown widely in the EU, US and Canada with major exhibitions at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, CCS Hessel Museum & CCS Galleries, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson Tate Modern, London and MuMOK Vienna.

Solo exhibitions include Lost Illusions/Illusions perdues, developed jointly with Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, Mercer Union, Toronto, and SBC Galerie, Montreal, No Title at the Centre of Contemporary Art, Derry, The Artist Talks at The Showroom, London, and The Meaning of Greatness at Project Arts Centre, Dublin. Pierce represented Ireland in a group exhibition at the 51st Venice Biennale and has since exhibited in major international biennials including Glasgow International, Eva International, Lyon Biennial, International Sinop Biennial, and the Moscow Biennial. 

Rike Frank, co-director of the European Kunsthalle, an institution without a physical space.

Rike Frank works as a curator and writer and teaches exhibition histories and curatorial practice. She is Executive Director of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme and co-director of the European Kunsthalle. Her practice often reflects on temporality, textility, and instituting and documenting curatorial articulations. Past institutional affiliations include Associate Professor of Exhibition Studies at the Academy of Fine Art of the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2014–2018); head of the exhibition space at Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig (2012–2014); member of the Artistic Program team, European Kunsthalle (2010–2012); Curator, Secession, Vienna (2001–2005); head of the Curatorial Office, documenta 12 (2007).

Publications as editor and co-editor include Of(f) Our Times. Curatorial Anachronics (2019), Ane Hjort Guttu. Writings, Conversations, Scripts (2018), Textiles: Open Letter (2015), Textile Theorien der Moderne. Alois Riegl in der Kunstkritik (2015), Timing – On the Temporal Dimension of Exhibiting (2014), and Sketches of Universal History: Compiled from Several Authors by Sarah Pierce (2013).