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Clare Gallagher

@clare_gallagher_

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Artist - Academic - Mother - Irish
📚Subversive Mothers, Disturbing Domesticity, Bloomsbury, out in paperback in June
📚The Second Shift, last copies

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The ‘Cultural Encounters’ experiential event at the Metropolitan Arts Centre (MAC) in Belfast on Saturday 10 October 2026 at 10 am-2 pm is almost fully booked. The speakers and contributors include people from the arts and curatorship, clinical practice, and academic research and writing: Allen Fatimaharan, Siobhán Bereen, Niamh Callaghan, Joanna Fortune, Clare Gallagher, Noreen Giffney, Janet Healy, Geralyn Mulqueen, Ann Murphy, Nicole Murray, Brian Patterson and James Ward. For information about the event, the speakers and contributors, and to register, email me at n.giffney@ulster.ac.uk Join us as we think and talk about the emotional and psychological importance of our experiences with the arts and culture throughout our lives.

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Some week… Watched in horror as Belfast showed its worst side; my fantastic PhD student Dr Niamh Callaghan passed her viva with no corrections (pictured with myself and Dr Noreen Giffney, two very proud supervisors); a huge thank you to the brilliant @lizajthompson and all who came to my book talk @bx_gallery, it sparked some powerful conversations and I’m very grateful; my fab friends @armchairandrocket showed their new film; heard a tree creeper thanks to @karen_crennell and the Merlin bird app; Belfast showed its true spirit in a colossal rally against racism, and the sun finally came out

Pic 3 @dynamitedoherty 🙏

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I’m delighted to invite you to a lunchtime talk to mark the launch of my new book Subversive Mothers, Disturbing Domesticity, at 12.30pm on Saturday 6th June at Belfast Exposed Gallery as part of Belfast Photo Festival.

I will be in conversation with the wonderful Liza Thompson, Senior Publisher at Bloomsbury, talking domestic struggle, art as resistance, solidarity, and visibility.

Home is a space shaped by emotion, expectation and contradiction. It can offer comfort, care and belonging, but it can also feel oppressive, unequal or out of reach. This talk will explore some of the many dimensions of domestic life,and ask what it means to inhabit home physically, emotionally and socially. Is home a sanctuary, a workplace, or a site of struggle? Subversive Mothers, Disturbing Domesticity invites you to rethink this deeply familiar yet elusive space, tracing the hidden histories, emotions and tensions that exist within it, and challenging what is overlooked, normalised or left unseen.

Saturday 6th June
12.30-1.30pm
Belfast Exposed Gallery
Donegall St
Free event, all welcome!

***OUT IN PAPERBACK JUNE 2027, AVAILABLE TO PREORDER NOW***

#subversivemothers #disturbingdomesticity #motherartist #artasresistance
@lizajthompson @bx_gallery @belfastphotofestival @belfastschoolofart
📷 @john_spinks

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‘Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood’ closed on Sunday 11th at Visual Carlow, Ireland. It was an honour to be part of this astounding project, and pure joy to meet in person so many fellow Irish artists whose work I have long admired.

The showing of ‘Eupnea’ was carefully considered and I could not have been more pleased with the cinematic installation and the attention to detail from the team at Visual Carlow.

Thanks to Hettie Judah, Gilly Fox, Visual Carlow, Hayward Gallery and all the artists

ARTISTS:
Felicity Allen  Janine Antoni  Cassie Arnold  Bobby Baker  Elina Brotherus  Liesel Burisch  Cathy Cade  Lea Cetera  Elizabeth Cope  Phoebe Cope  Renee Cox  Dorothy Cross  Pauline Cummins  Rineke Dijkstra Natalie Djurberg & Hans Berg Leni Dothan  Marlene Dumas  Tracey Emin  Jessa Fairbrother  Rachel Fallon  Feministo Fenix  Emma Finucane  Angela Forte  Clare Gallagher  Maeve Gilmore  Anna Greenitis  Camille Henrot
Susan Hiller  Patricia Hurl  Elsa James  Chantal Joffe  Liss Lafleur  Maternal Fantasies Nalini Malani  Lindsey Mendick  Trish Morrissey  Mother Art  Wangechi Mutu  Ishbel Myerscough  Geraldine O’Neill  Catherine Opie  Fani Parali Celia Paul  Cathie Pilkington Polvo De Gallina Negra  Kathy Prendergast  Laure Prouvost  Paula Rego  Su Richardson  Sister Seven Monica Sjöö Annegret Soltau  Tabitha Soren  Nancy Spero  Hannah Starkey  The Hackney Flashers  Mierle Laderman Ukeles  Christine Voge Del La Grace Volcano Caroline Walker Nancy Willis  Hermione Wiltshire & Clare Bottomley Carmen Winant  Daphne Wright  Billie Zangewa
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#actsofcreation #artandmotherhood #artistmother #irishartist

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It’s the final week to visit Acts of Creation: on Art and Motherhood at VISUAL Carlow.

It has been a complete joy and honour to exhibit alongside so many of my artist heroes and friends in this incredible show. Seeing motherhood given the attention, ambition and scope it deserves - displayed in all its diversity, complexity and significance throughout VISUAL Carlow’s expansive space - has been galvanising.

Ireland has long had a difficult relationship with motherhood. Both the context of this exhibition and the breadth of work presented here add vital nuance to the many voices, sensibilities and perspectives within this vast subject.

The show is also a reminder that the often fraught, painful, lonely experiences of motherhood are much more collective and shared than we are led to believe.

Huge thanks to @hettiejudah for curating, @gillyfoxdotcom at Hayward Touring, @emmalucyobrien outgoing VISUAL director, @clarelbreen engagement programme, and @artscouncilireland for lending my work from their collection.

Exhibition is open until 11th January, free entry, all welcome @visual_carlow

ARTISTS:
Felicity Allen  Janine Antoni  Cassie Arnold  Bobby Baker  Elina Brotherus  Liesel Burisch  Cathy Cade  Lea Cetera  Elizabeth Cope  Phoebe Cope  Renee Cox  Dorothy Cross  Pauline Cummins  Rineke Dijkstra Natalie Djurberg & Hans Berg Leni Dothan  Marlene Dumas  Tracey Emin  Jessa Fairbrother  Rachel Fallon  Feministo Fenix  Emma Finucane  Angela Forte  Clare Gallagher  Maeve Gilmore  Anna Greenitis  Camille Henrot
Susan Hiller  Patricia Hurl  Elsa James  Chantal Joffe  Liss Lafleur  Maternal Fantasies Nalini Malani  Lindsey Mendick  Trish Morrissey  Mother Art  Wangechi Mutu  Ishbel Myerscough  Geraldine O’Neill  Catherine Opie  Fani Parali Celia Paul  Cathie Pilkington Polvo De Gallina Negra  Kathy Prendergast  Laure Prouvost  Paula Rego  Su Richardson  Sister Seven Monica Sjöö Annegret Soltau  Tabitha Soren  Nancy Spero  Hannah Starkey  The Hackney Flashers  Mierle Laderman Ukeles  Christine Voge Del La Grace Volcano Caroline Walker Nancy Willis  Hermione Wiltshire & Clare Bottomley Carmen Winant  Daphne Wright  Billie Zangewa

#artistmother #artandmotherhood

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Clare was here 💫 @clare_gallagher_ Her amazing series The Second Shift is part of the exhibit My Obvious Presence & she came the see it straight from Belfast. How amazing is that! Also I got her beautiful album as present look into it AMAZING sensitive smart photography ✊ @erikadeakgallery #imobvioslypresent #jelenletemevidens

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@photoireland here on our fifth post revisiting Irish photobooks from the PhotoIreland Collection. Today, we want to highlight some of our visitors’ favourite titles from Irish contemporary photographers, with a loose overarching theme of family and youth.

We start with Emma O’Brien’s first photobook The Holding Place, supported by @artscouncilireland. It is a meditation on the physical, psychological, and political landscape of Motherhood, blurring the personal and the political space of mother and an artist. The book was co-published with PhotoIreland, after Emma’s participation in our Professional Development Programme.

Raising a similar conversation is The Second Shift by Clare Gallagher. Her work sets out to recognise the complexity and value of the invisible work of housework and childcare, primarily carried out by women on top of their paid employment.

With a different focus, recently published, and already sold out, in Girls Night, where Eimear Lynch explores girlhood rooted in the Irish teen rituals and intimate spaces of bedrooms, bathrooms and dance halls across the country.

Another very popular title on youth, subculture, and freedom is Megan Doherty’s Stoned in Melanchol. It explores identity and friendship in her native Derry in Northern Ireland, performing an ideal and much desired escapism that replaced the shared experience of the post-Troubles generation. The escapism manifests in the book too, as it adopts the format that resembles a cigarette paper pack, with every page folded and ready for consumption.

Finally, ten years after his body of work was presented at New Irish Work’s show at @TLP_Says, during @photoirelandfst, the iconic photograph of the young couple on a Dublin bus graces the cover of Daragh Soden’s long awaited photobook Young Dubliners. His work is a portrait of youth of Ireland’s capital, fresh and optimistic, and the book reflects these notions very well with a classical layout.

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I am still processing the incredible weekend I just spent at VISUAL in Carlow, Ireland where I went for the celebration of the latest iteration of ‘Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood’, curated by the amazing Hettie Judah. This version of the exhibition included several Irish artists for the first time. I am originally from Ireland, and so being invited to show at @visual_carlow, was very special.

I am showing the film ‘Eupnea’ in a beautiful installation. The attention to detail by the team was so impressive, nothing was too much trouble. It was fantastic to meet in person with so many artists I have long admired from afar.

I travelled from the UK with @jessfairbrother who has been in the exhibition from the outset, and who has attended all the openings in the tour. We had so much fun, I could not have asked for a better wing woman. Thanks as always to the team at @closeltd gallery for their support, and to @serlachiusmuseums where the journey of ‘Eupnea’ began.

‘Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood’ is such a ground breaking and important project, the book and the exhibitions have started conversations about sensitive themes normally ignored by the art establishment. It’s legacy will live on. To have a small part in that is an honour.

Enormous thanks to @hettiejudah
whose baby this truly is, to @gillyfoxdotcom and Brian Cass from Hayward Gallery Touring who made it possible and to Emma Lucy O’Brian @emmalucyobrien and Benjamin Stafford who had the vision to make it happen at VISUAL, Carlow.

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Yesterday we opened a new version of Acts of Creation at VISUAL in Carlow, Ireland - old friends from the UK touring exhibition were joined by further works by Irish artists and from Irish collections.
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Working on this show I’ve always been interested in the idea of touring an exhibition as an idea rather than a fixed group of works - the theme of motherhood is universal, albeit with different implications and particularities (Ireland of course has its own very particular context). It has been fascinating to bring another art history into the existing exhibition structure.
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Here are a few shots of the show, with new works and old. It’s a short train journey from Dublin, and is on until January - I do hope that you get to see it.
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I have tagged artists on the images where I can - pictured above are works by 1) Angela Forte, 2) Patricia Hurl and Kathy Prendergast, 3) Pauline Cummins and Hermione Wiltshire, 4) Emma Finucane, 5) Clare Gallagher, Daphne Wright and Hannah Starkey, 6) Patricia Hurl and Ishbel Myerscough, 7) Rachel Fallon, 8) Christine Voge, Dorothy Cross, Anna Grevenitis and Cassie Arnold, 9) Trish Morrissey
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#actsofcreation #irishexhibition #artandmotherhood #womenartists #feministart #art

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Such a fun Sunday afternoon at Qft for Say Yes to VHS - go check@out ‘The Wonder Cinema ‘ podcast on Spotify or wherever you find your podcasts - congrats to my good friend BHM - ever innovative and passionate

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Late Night Art sorted ✅
Artist Talk: Clare Gallagher on Sophie Calle.
Thurs 7 Aug at 5pm.
Free, booking required via Eventbrite (link in bio).

@clare_gallagher_ @latenightart_belfast

#GoldenThreadGallery #LateNightArt #ArtistTalk #SophieCalle
@artfund @artscouncilni @ampersandfoundation @belfastcitycouncil @fcgulbenkian @halifaxfoundationni @westonfdn

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