PhotoIreland launches the International Centre for the Image this July

Pioneering a new and exciting cultural space for Ireland, the International Centre for the Image consolidates all of PhotoIreland’s projects under one roof. The space will offer new and richer ways to engage with photography and the visual arts, while expanding the discipline and empowering artists.

PhotoIreland launches the International Centre for the Image in the North Docklands in Dublin this July with the support of Kennedy Wilson and the Arts Council of Ireland. The centre will strengthen artistic and curatorial practices in Ireland and internationally through a focus on the role of the still and moving image in arts discourse and for contemporary society.

The centre is the result of PhotoIreland’s research carried out since 2017 towards the development of a forward-looking museum. The space at its core is informed by current ideas around equality, fairness, and representation in arts practice, avoiding the contradictions and failures of a museum’s historical model, around which there are many transformational conversations.

The new centre is an ecologically focused, purpose-built venue, which will consolidate PhotoIreland’s substantial portfolio of projects, built over the last 15 years. PhotoIreland’s work investigates how images are created, distributed, and consumed, exploring important conversations through the work of artists.

The International Centre for the Image presents a unique space for PhotoIreland’s three strategic pillars, which are Artists, Artforms, and Audiences. The space constitutes four main areas: research, production, exhibition, and storage.

The location of the International Centre for the Image in Coopers Cross campus, in the heart of the Dublin Docklands, is the result of a cultural partnership between PhotoIreland and Kennedy Wilson, the real estate investment company responsible for the development of the quarter. Over a two-year period, the partnership benefited from the mediation of Claire Healy, Head of Cultural Strategy for Kennedy Wilson, until the project was consolidated in July 2024. This level of partnership is arguably unprecedented in Ireland given its scope and process.

The exciting first exhibition coming to the centre, Foreword, highlights works from 17 artists representing a broad set of art practices around photography, and teases out the curatorial issues to which the centre is dedicated. This inaugural show includes both moving and still-image artists: Abigail O’Brien, Alan Butler, Alex Prager, Ana Zibelnik and Jakob Ganslmeier, Anna Ehrenstein, Anna Safiatou Touré, Basil Al-Rawi, Bassam Issa Al-Sabah and Jennifer Mehigan, Colin Martin, David Farrell, Dominic Hawgood, Eamonn Doyle, Jean Curran, Mishka Henner, and Penelope Umbrico.

Main Image: Copyright Photo Ireland, International Centre for the Image