Re-Imagining the City - a night walk with artist Ruby Wallis

Artist Ruby Wallis will lead participants to Saint Stephens Green with cameras or phones, moving through the city slowly and attentively, exploring overlooked spaces and shifting how we see the familiar with an emphasis on the idea of slowing down and observing the city as a space for the imagination, and also an awareness of safety in public space.

The walk will draw on ideas of psychogeography and embodied experience—using the act of wandering to spark imagination and invite new ways of engaging with the urban landscape. Along the way, participants will be encouraged to notice details such as pathways, plant life, textures, and fleeting atmospheres. Using camera phones, cameras, and simple drawing or note-taking materials, each participant will create their own small record of the walk, generating images and impressions that respond to the city after dark.

The evening will end with a shared reflection, bringing together individual responses into a collective re-imagining of the night city.

Participants taking part in the the following day will also gather materials during the walk to use in their workshop session.(Photographs will be made using basic smartphone cameras)

Image 1: 19.49pm. Photo credit Ruby Wallis

Image 2: 1.17am. Photo credit Ruby Wallis

Image 3: 9.47pm, A Woman Walks Alone at Night with a Camera,2021. Photo credit Ruby Wallis

ARCHIPELAGO

Ruby Wallis is one of seventeen artists currently exhibiting as part of the group show ARCHIPELAGO at the RHA Gallery (11 September - 26 October 2025)

ARCHIPELAGO is the result of a collaboration between the RHA’s exhibition department and the artist-led group Island Photographers, who foster engagement with and understanding of photography in Ireland, both in the fine art realm and the broader lens-based culture industry through talks, events and workshops. All eight members are participating in the show.

Artist Biography
Ruby Wallis is a visual artist working with lens-based media, and she lectures at The Burren College of Art. In 2022 she published the photobook A Woman Walks Alone at Night with a Camera in collaboration with writer Phillina Sun. Selected exhibitions include Between Dog and Wolf, A Space for Lismore, Lismore Castle Arts. A R C H I P E L A G O, RHA Gallery, The Lab, Photomuseum Ireland, The Hugh Lane Gallery, PhotoIreland Festival, BX Gallery, The Dock, Vondelbunker: Amsterdam, The TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, Perlman Teaching Museum, and Solas Nua, USA. Her work has been featured in The Journal of Artistic Research, The New Yorker, British Journal of Photography, and Winter Papers (vol. 6 and 7). Collections include Arts Council Ireland, Rochester Art Centre (USA) and the National University of Ireland. She is supported by The Arts Council of Ireland.

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