This event explores a concept developed by Sarah Pierce over many years: the community of the exhibition. It describes how exhibitions bring together people, and artworks, across generations, geographies, and times. We enter the exhibition and join others not of our choosing—other stories and other subjects—in unavowable bonds and unexpected forms of belonging.

Sarah Pierce: Scene of the Myth is a catalogue of thirteen works, spanning twenty years, that comprise the exhibition, Sarah Pierce: Scene of the Myth, curated by Rike Frank at IMMA (Dublin), GfZK (Leipzig) and John Hansard Gallery (Southampton) in 2023-2025. The title stems from one of Pierce’s essays where she describes museums and art academies as places where we reproduce and reinvent narratives across generations, geographies and times. The book, conceived in collaboration with managing editor Nathan O’Donnell, situates this expansive exhibition through installation views at the three venues, including documentation of performances and readings; a selection of texts relating to former iterations of the works, including writings by the artist, and a set of four new texts written specifically for the book.

The newly commissioned essays on Pierce’s work come from long-time companions: Bik Van der Pol respond to the exhibition at IMMA, reflecting on their affinities with Pierce’s practice over many years. Tirdad Zolghadr writes on the problem of community, exploring how Pierce’s work resonates within turbulent cultural politics. Pip Day examines diasporic legacies and the politics of resistance in certain projects, while Grant Watson traces the artist’s practices back to the foundation of the Metropolitan Complex and identifies subtle and persistent tendencies in Pierce’s work. In addition, included are republished texts by Clare Butcher, Zachary Cahill, Maeve Connolly, Annie Fletcher, Caroline Hancock, Mason Leaver-Yap, Sarah Pierce and Roy Claire Potter.

Sarah Pierce: Scene of the Myth, 2025, ed. Rike Frank, published by IMMA and Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Köln, in association with the European Kunsthalle; GfZK – Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig; and John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton. Design by Yvonne Quirmbach. Price €19.95, available to purchase from the IMMA Shop.

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 continual renegotiation of the terms for making art and the complexities of categorising, archiving, collecting and instituting.

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.

Nathan O’Donnell is a writer, curator, and one of the co-editors of the Irish contemporary art publisher, PVA (Journal + Books). His work as a critic, scholar, editor, and curator has been focused on modern and contemporary art as well as experimental publishing, and he has edited and produced several project-based publications and zines. He also writes in the mode of the personal essay and has published across many journals and other outlets.

Colm Keady-Tabbal is an Irish-Lebanese Artist based in Dublin and New York. Their practice spans a diverse range of media and activities, often deploying strategies of evasion, distraction, and deferral.