Sarah Pierce in Conversation

Join artist Sarah Pierce in conversation with guest curator Rike Frank alongside Pierce’s solo exhibition, Scene of the Myth, on show at John Hansard Gallery. Chaired by Ros Carter.
Scene of the Myth consists of performances, videos, installations, and archives. Sarah Pierce, who lives and works in Dublin, relocated to Ireland from the US in 2000. The exhibition brings together six works, spanning twenty years, to highlight patterns of making and thinking that define Pierce’s art practice. Borne out of sticky relationships between the narratives we reproduce and those we wish to leave behind, Scene of the Myth asks what it means to gather, reflect, and act in community.
About the speakers:
Since 2003, Sarah Pierce has used the term The Metropolitan Complex to describe her ongoing work, characterised by forms of ‘gathering’, both historical and those she initiates. Her research processes demonstrate a broad understanding of cultural work and a continual renegotiation of the terms for making art, the potential for dissent, and self-determination. Pierce works with installation, performance, archives, talks and papers, often opening these up to challenge received histories and accepted ‘norms’. Her interests include radical teaching methods and student work; art historical legacies and figures such as El Lissitzky, August Rodin, and Eva Hesse; and theories of community and love founded in Maurice Blanchot and Georges Bataille.
Rike Frank is Guest Curator of Sarah Pierce: Scene of the Myth. She works as a curator and writer and teaches exhibition histories and curatorial practice. She is currently Executive Director of the Berlin Artistic Research Programme, as well as co-director of the European Kunsthalle, an institution without a space. She has held senior positions within numerous institutions and organisations across Europe, such as: Secession, Vienna; documenta, Kassel; Oslo National Academy of Fine Arts; and the Academy of Fine Arts, Leipzig.
Ros Carter is Head of Programme (Senior Curator) at John Hansard Gallery. She has over thirty years’ experience of curating and organising exhibitions and publications at a national and international level. She was recently the curator and co-editor of a major international survey and publication on the work of Danish-Greenlandic artist, Pia Arke.

Host or Publisher John Hansard Gallery