Belfast-based curator and Curatorial Intensive alumnus Eoin Dara will speak on the wealth of artistic activity shaping the city of Belfast, and the social and political context in which this work is being produced.

He will focus specifically on collaborative curatorial projects in which he has been involved, such as the domestic exhibition space Satis House and the Household Festival for Contemporary Art. These initiatives, as well as the recent exhibition this is authenticity at the Golden Thread Gallery, form the locus of Dara’s current independent research considering physical and psychological constructions of ‘home’, investigating the aspirations and ideologies constantly shaping the spaces and places in which we dwell.

The talk will also provide a broad overview of the dynamic culture of risk-taking and innovation that has been the backbone of the art scene in Northern Ireland since the early ‘90s. Taking the artist-led organisation Catalyst Arts (of which Dara is an ex-director) as a starting point, he will discuss how self-organised activity among artists and curators in Belfast has filled a significant cultural void in a city emerging from a major period of conflict, and how this collaborative ethos continues to drive artistic and curatorial practice in the city today.

Eoin Dara is a curator based in Belfast. He gained a MA (Hons) in Art History and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, and is currently working as the Assistant Curator at the MAC. In this capacity he has worked with artists such as Kara Walker, Johanna Billing, Mary McIntyre, and Lothar Götz, as well as delivered exhibitions of work by Andy Warhol, Robert Therrien, and Bas Jan Ader. Dara was a co-director of Catalyst Arts from 2010 to 2012, and is one of the co-founders and lead curators of both the domestic exhibition space Satis House, and the curatorial collective Household. Recent independent curatorial projects include Moments of Inception at QSS Gallery, andthis is authenticity at the Golden Thread Gallery.

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