New Irish Works 2022: call now open.

The jury members are: Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger, Bindi Vora, Cale Garrido, Elias Redstone, István Virágvölgyi,  João Linneu & Myrto Steirou, Kate Strain, Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh, Natasha Christia, Rein Deslé.

PhotoIreland is providing a fee of €200 to each jury member for the contractual work expected in reviewing submissions, selecting a number of artists according to the remit of New Irish Works described in this page.

Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger, PhD, currently works both as the Chief Curator of Exhibitions at the Finnish Museum of Photography and as Professor of Exhibition Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki. She is responsible for the MA-program for curatorial and exhibition studies, Praxis, too. She also is an artistic director and co-founder of The Festival of Political Photography, which seeks to examine what the term ”political” means in contemporary extended photographic practices.

Rastenberger has extensive experience in exhibition projects, curatorial practices, and the international exhibition scene of the contemporary arts. She co-edited a book Why Exhibit? Positions On Exhibiting Photographies, 2018, FW:books and works on the second volume dealing with photo curation. Her special interests are new forms of photography as contemporary art, exhibition as critical practice, feminist curation and running.

Bindi Vora is an artist, curator and Curatorial Project Manager at Autograph, London. She recently curated Poulomi Basu: Centralia for Rencontres d’Arles – Louis Roederer Discovery Award (2020).

Since joining Autograph, Vora has co-curated solo exhibitions including Lola Flash: [sur]passing (2019) and Maxine Walker: Untitled (2019), is curating Poulomi Basu: Fireflies (2022) and contributed to a series of in-conversations with multidisciplinary artists including Mónica Alcázar-Duarte, Maryam Wahid and Tobi Alexandra Falade. She has written for publications such as the British Journal of Photography, FOAM and Loose Associations, and participated in public programmes at London Art Fair, GRAIN Photo Hub and The Photographers’ Gallery, amongst others.

Portrait by Laura Hensser

Cale Garrido is a Spanish independent journalist, photo editor, and curator based in Hamburg, Germany. She works on documentary and artistic photography projects, exhibitions, and publications. After her Journalism studies, she self-published two photobooks with documentary photographer Philipp Meuser: ‘Kadosh’ (2015) and ‘Neorrurales’ (2018), focussing on the politics of housing and demographics in different contexts. Since 2016, she has worked as a photo editor for Greenpeace-related publications in Germany. This experience has fostered a lasting interest in environmentally engaging photographic and artistic projects and brought her to curate group shows like ‘Urgent Arts of Living’ (Kaunas Photography Gallery, 2019) and ‘What if the Earth becomes Uninhabitable’ (with co-curator Peter Lindhorst, PHmuseum, 2020). As a member of the artists’ collective APPARAT, founded in Berlin in 2017, she curated the group exhibition ‘Die Anderen sind Wir. Bilder einer dissonanten Gesellschaft’ (Brandenburgischen Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst in Cottbus, 2019). Cale collaborates regularly with Kaunas Photography Gallery and is co-editor of the publications ‘Joan Fontcuberta: Crisis of History’ (Co-curator Alison Nordström, 2020) and ‘Women’s Workshop’ (Upcoming, 2022). In 2020 she has joined the curatorial team at the 8th Triennial of Photography Hamburg 2022 under the artistic direction of Koyo Kouoh and with fellow curators Rasha Salti, Oluremi C. Onabanjo, and Gabriella Beckhurst Feijoo.

Portrait by Paula Markert

Elias Redstone is the founder of Photo Australia and Artistic Director of PHOTO International Festival of Photography (photo.org.au), a biennial of new photography, art and ideas in Melbourne delivered in collaboration with over 50 museums, galleries, universities and government partners. The first edition, PHOTO 2021, responded to the theme ‘The Truth’ and featured over 160 artists including Zanele Muholi, Hoda Afshar, Sam Contis, Brook Andrew, Kenta Cobayashi and Daniel Shea, amongst others. PHOTO 2022 will take place 29 April – 22 May 2022.

Exhibitions as an independent curator include Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age (Barbican Art Gallery, 2014) and the international touring exhibition Archizines (2011–2015) which was exhibited in 34 cities around the world. Previously he was Curator of the Polish Pavilion at the 2010 Venice Biennale and Senior Curator at the Architecture Foundation, London.

He has delivered projects in partnership with international museums and cultural institutions including MoMA, Tate Modern, Storefront for Art and Architecture and the British Council. He is a nominator for international photography awards including Prix Pictet, C/O Berlin’s Talent Award and the British Journal of Photography’s Ones to Watch.

He is Wallpaper’s Australia Editor, has acted as a contributing editor for Arena Homme Plus and GQ Style, and has edited publications for PHOTO Editions, Prestel, Sternberg Press and Bedford Press. His book Shooting Space: Architecture in Contemporary Photography is published by Phaidon.

Portrait by Hoda Afshar

István Virágvölgyi studied freehand drawing, desktop publishing, photography and earned a master’s degree from library and information studies at Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest, Hungary).

He worked at the leading Hungarian news portal Origo first as photo editor and then as head of photography between 2007 and 2011. Then he joined MTI Hungarian News Agency and served as head of the photo desk for three years. He lectured about documentary photography and photo editing at the Budapest Metropolitan University between 2014 and 2019. Since 2014 he works as curator of the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center and he is the secretary of the Capa Grand Prize Hungary.

Since 2016 he is cultural advisor of the Archabbey of Pannonhalma, since 2018 volunteer editor of the Fortepan digital photo archive, and since 2021 member of the board of trustees of the József Pécsi Photography Scholarship for young artists. He is married, has two children, lives and works in Budapest.

Portrait by Balazs Mohai

Void is an independent publishing house dedicated to photography books and education. The project is driven by its founders Myrto Steirou and João Linneu.

Greek-born, based in Athens, Myrto Steirou (1989) graduated in International Relations and holds an MSc in Middle East Politics from School of Oriental and African Studies. From 2013–2016, to continue her research on Turkish Politics using photography, she attended a series of photography courses and seminars in Athens and Paris. She has worked on her personal photography projects and as a freelance photographer in different fields such as theater, news, and fashion. In 2016, she co-founded Void where she acts as an editor and project manager. In 2019 she also co-founded Carnivora, an imprint that specializes in Hispanic noir literature.

Brazilian born, based in Reykjavík, João Linneu (1978) is the co-founder of Void, an independent publishing house focused on photography books, established in 2016. Graduated in Communication, he worked for more than 20 years as Art Director, Head of Art and Creative Director in several advertising agencies in São Paulo and London. He received prestigious advertising and design awards such as the D&AD, Cannes Lions, One Show and Clio.

Kate Strain is a curator of contemporary art. From 2016–2021 she was artistic director of Grazer Kunstverein, Austria, where she curated projects by Aimée Zito Lema and Becket MWN, Elisabeth von Samsonow, Bianca Baldi, Alma Heikkilä, Emma Wolf-Haugh, Tai Shani, Edward Clydesdale Thomson, Riccardo Giacconi, Sylvia Schedelbauer, Triple Candie, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Carl Johan Högberg, Niamh O’Malley, Cesare Pietroiusti, Nadia Belerique, Christian Nyampeta, Anne Tallentire, Dennis McNulty, Mehraneh Atashi, Angelika Loderer, Ola Vasiljeva, Isabel Nolan, and Emily Mast, among others. In close collaboration with artist Fiona Hallinan, Strain is co-founder of the Department of Ultimology, a research body dedicated to the study of that which is dead or dying. The department is part of the Orthogonal Methods Group (OMG), based at CONNECT – the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Future Networks and Communications, headquartered at Trinity College Dublin. Working alongside Rachael Gilbourne, Strain makes up one half of the paired curatorial practice RGKSKSRG. Throughout 2019 RGKSKSRG produced a series of extended filmic studio visits with artists Bea McMahon, Eithne Jordan, Vivienne Dick, and Christopher Mahon. Strain lives in Wicklow, Ireland, where she is currently establishing the institutional framework for Kunstverein Aughrim, Ireland’s first art association based on the European model of the Kunstverein.

Portrait by Thomas Raggam

Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh is a curator and critic based in Kumasi, Ghana.

He is a member of the Exit Frame Collective who are, besides artistic and curatorial projects, intervening in the intellectual infrastructure of professional art practice in Ghana by initiating the annual 12-day peer-to-peer intensive professional development program, ‘CritLab’, in partnership with Foundation for Contemporary Art – Ghana, blaxTARLINES KUMASI and Savanna Center for Contemporary Art, Tamale.

Ohene-Ayeh is co-curator of Akutia: Blindfolding the Sun and the Poetics of Peace (A Retrospective of Agyeman Ossei ‘Dota’) in Tamale, Ghana (2020-2021). He also co-curated the 12th edition of Bamako Encounters: Biennale of African Photography themed Streams of Consciousness: A Concatenation of Dividuals in Mali (2019-2020). He received the ACASA Award for Curatorial Excellence in 2021. Ohene-Ayeh is one of the Artistic Advisors for the 59th Venice Biennale (International Art Exhibition in 2022), under the artistic direction of the Curator Cecilia Alemani.

He is a lecturer at the Department of Painting and Sculpture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi.

Natasha Christia (Athens, 1976) is an unaffiliated curator, writer and educator based in Barcelona. She holds a BA in archaeology and art history from the National Kapodistrian University of Athens, an MA in modern art and film from the University of Essex and a postgraduate diploma in publishing from the University of Barcelona.

Her research focuses on the exploration and reinvention of dominant narratives through a novel reading of archival collections, the intersection of photography, film and the photobook and the dialogue between 20th century avant-garde photography and contemporary forms of expression often labelled as post-photography.

Christia was the artistic director of the fourth edition of DocField Documentary Photography Festival 2016, which was launched under the theme of Europe: Lost in Translation. She has curated various exhibitions, among them, AMORE: An Unfinished Trilogy by Valentina Abenavoli (Void/Athens Photo Festival, 2017), Dragana Jurišić: My Own Unknown (Centre Culturel Irlandais, Photo Sant Germain, 2017), Reversiones (Centro de la Imagen, Mexico DF, 2017), Lukas Birk: Travelogue Sammlung (Galerie Lustenau, Austria 2018) and You Are What You Eat (Krakow Photomonth 2019).

She regularly contributes essays on photography criticism for international publications and for artists. In 2019, she edited with Lukas Birk (Fraglich Publishing) on Gülistan (winner of the PHotoEspaña Best Photobook Award 2019, International Category).

Rein Deslé has been working as a curator at FOMU (Photo Museum of Antwerp) since 2010.

She has curated several thematical exhibitions including Claude Samuel Zanele (2018), Show Us the Money (2016), Shooting Range (2014), You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet (2013) and Rebel Lives (2019) and solo shows for Max Pinckers, Mathieu Asselin, Saul Leiter, Camille Picquot, Harry Gruyaert, Sébastien Reuzé and Jan Hoek, among many others.

She is the founder of the platform for emerging Belgian talent .tiff (since 2012) and helped establish Trigger, an online and printed magazine. She is frequently asked as a jury member for (inter) national photography masters, grants and awards.