PPS/PVA Visual Art Writing Commission 2022 recipient Sarah Kelleher
Pallas Projects and Paper Visual Art are delighted to announce Sarah Kelleher as the 2022 recipient of their annual writing commission for early-career writers. This award is the second of an ongoing series, aiming to encourage, develop, and support new and ambitious critical writing in the context of contemporary visual art in Ireland, and to afford the recipient the opportunity to reflect on and publish work on their specific area of interest.
The commission is part of Pallas Projects' ongoing curatorial project Periodical Review (2011–ongoing) and together with the selected works is intended to further discourse on the contemporary moment in visual art in Ireland, while also building a record of art practice, projects, and concepts over time. These are commitments shared by Paper Visual Art Journal and this new critical initiative represents a welcome opportunity to collaborate across organisations. Awardees receive a professional fee and editorial input and support from Pallas Projects and Paper Visual Art, and their text is published in the printed exhibition publication, and online on the PVA website.
About Sarah Kelleher
Sarah Kelleher is an independent arts writer, curator, and Government of Ireland scholar currently finishing her PhD on contemporary Irish sculpture with the History of Art Department in UCC. Her research focuses Irish art since the 1990s with an emphasis on sculptural practice, queer theory and phenomenology. She has published widely, including exhibition texts for the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Limerick City Gallery, as well as for the Ulterior Gallery in New York and Domo Baal Gallery in London. Her reviews have appeared in Paper Visual, Enclave Review, Circa, the Visual Artists Newssheet, the Irish Arts Review and the Sunday Times. She has also published journal articles on Japanese post war photography and dada sculpture and performance. Sarah nurtures an independent curatorial practice and is the curator of Kevin Mooney: Revenants, IMMA 2022. As co-founder of Pluck Projects, an independent curatorial venture, along with Dr. Rachel Warriner, Sarah has co-curated the exhibitions Rachel Fallon's The Mother City project (2022); Padraig Spillane's define silver lining (2022); Jessica Akerman's Cork Caryatids (2021) and Alice Maher: Vox Materia (2018). Pluck Projects are currently organising a series of symposia on Irish Art for the RHA in Dublin which consider the relation between Irish artists and the institution as the Academy reaches its 200th anniversary.
The PPS/PVA Visual Art Writing Commission is supported through Arts Grant Funding by The Arts Council