School of Visual Culture
Phone: 01-6364343
Email: pierces@staff.ncad.ie
Dr. Sarah Pierce
Research in the curatorial, exhibition history, radical pedagogies and student culture.
I am an artist and teacher who lives in Dublin. Community, self-organisation and open networks are central to my practice. I work over long periods on projects with many parts and, invariably, I call upon others to join me in this work. Since 2003, I have used the term The Metropolitan Complex to describe this project, characterised by forms of gathering, both historical examples and those I initiate. The processes of research and presentation that I undertake demonstrate a continual renegotiation of the terms for making art and the complexities of categorising, archiving, collecting and instituting. Drives in my work include radical pedagogies, dissent and self-determination, unofficial archives, affinities and student culture. I am keenly invested in how research operates through institutions. For those whose work mobilises through precarity, grief and colonial violence research can be a dirty word. How to disclose what is excluded, untranslatable, unanswerable, and dispossessed? To insist as I do that research is performative, socially organised and always unfinished is to make visible a whole set of gestures that are not exclusively mine.
Education
2014 PhD in Curatorial Knowledge, School of Visual Culture, Goldsmiths College, University of London, London.
1995 Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, New York.
1994 MFA School of Architecture art and planning, Cornell University, Ithaca.
1990 BA in Religious Studies and Studio Art (double major) Occidental College, Los Angeles.
Academic positions
2015-2017 Co-course leader, MA Art Praxis, Dutch Art Institute, Arnhem.
2013-2015 MA Supervisor, School of Missing Studies, MA Fine Art, Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam.
2014 Senior Tutor, Media Studies Department, National University of Ireland, Maynooth.
2014 Visiting Artist, Art Academy of Palestine, Ramallah.
2012 Lecturer, Fine Art, Technical University Dublin.
2011, 2013 Visiting Faculty, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York.
2010 Visiting Lecturer, MA Curating, School of Art History, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen.
2004 – 2009 Assistant Lecturer, MA Visual Art (MAVis), Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dun Laoghaire.
2005-2007 Research Associate, Forms of Curating and Documentation, School of Art and Design, University of Ulster, Belfast.
2005 Visiting Lecturer, MA Fine Art, Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.
2003 MA Supervision, MA in the Digital World, National College of Art and Design, Dublin.
Awards
DWELL Here: one year residency, IMMA 2025
Zeitgeist Irland Artist, Culture Ireland 2024
Arts Council of Ireland, Visual Arts Bursary 2024, 2022, 2018, 2016, 2015, 2014
Research Award, NCAD 2020
Temple Bar Gallery and Studios 2020-23; 2010-13
Culture Ireland Exhibition Award, 2014
Process Artist, Black Church Print Studio 2014
Paul D. Fleck Library and Archives Fellow, Banff Centre, Alberta 2013
Danish International Visiting Artist (DIVA) Award 2010
Arts Council of Ireland, New Work Award 2009
Professional Affiliations
Chair, Project Arts Centre, Dublin 2012-2020
Member, Broadstone Studios, Dublin 2000-2016
Member Temple Bar Gallery and Studios 2020-23; 2010-13
Advisory Panel, Happy Hypocrite journal of art writing, London 2014-2021
Advisory Board, Ultra-red, Los Angeles, London, Berlin 2007
I actively exhibit my work, often through accompanying workshops and performances. I have contributed to numerous publications, and work with other artists on zines and published projects. Since 2003, I have published the Metropolitan Complex Papers, an occasional series of printed conversations.
Exhibitions
My work has shown widely including in Ireland at Galway Arts Centre, the Centre for Contemporary Art Derry~Londonderry, and in Dublin at Project Arts Centre, Temple Bar Gallery, Rua Red, FOUR Gallery, the National Gallery of Ireland and the Irish Museum of Modern Art; in Europe at the Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, BAK Utrecht, Stroom den Haag, de Appel and SMART Projects Amsterdam, Witte de With (now Kunstinstituut Melly) Rotterdam, MuHKA Antwerp, mumok Vienna, Kunsthal Charlottenborg Copenhagen, Centre Georges Pompidou Paris, Schmela Haus K20+K21 Düsseldorf, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Sala Rekalde Bilbao and the Student Cultural Centre Belgrade; in Scotland at the Glasgow School of Art and Chapter 13; in England at Cornerhouse Manchester and the ICA, the Show Room, Flat Time House, Royal College of Art, Tate Modern and Whitechapel Project Room London; in the USA at MassMoCA, Mattress Factory Pittsburgh, CCS Hessel Museum & CCS Galleries at Bard College Annandale-on-Hudson, and P! Gallery, PS1 MoMA, Apex Art, Socrates Sculpture Park and Ludlow 38 New York; in Canada at Walter Phillips Gallery Banff, Mercer Union Toronto, SBC Galerie and VOX Montreal; and in Egypt at Townhouse Cairo. My work has also been included in international biennials including Glasgow International, EVA International Limerick, Lyon Biennial, Sinop Biennial, Moscow Biennial, and in 2005 I represented Ireland at the 51st Venice Biennale.
Select Publications
Scene of the Myth, monograph ed. Rike Frank (IMMA and Buchhandlung Walther König, Berlin 2025);
Archives on Show: A Curatorial Glossary, Vol 2 chapter “Displacing”, ed. Beatrice von Bismarck There are Better Ways: Education, Class and Free Thought FM, chapter “Access at its Most Attentive”, ed. Georgina Jackson (Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin 2021);
Curriculum, Clare Butcher chapter on Sarah Pierce “Preparatory Gestures” ed. Jennie Guy (Intellect Books, Bristol 2020)
Curatorial Things, chapter “It’s the Thing” ed. Beatrice von Bismarck (Sternberg, New York 2019)
How Institutions Think, chapter “remote Choreographies” ed. Paul O’Neill (Luma Foundation 2017)
School of Missing Studies, chapter “As If!” ed. Bik Vander Pol (Sternberg New York 2017)
To Seminar, chapter “Campus”, ed. Henk Slager (Metropolis M., Utrecht 2017)
No Title, co-edited with Sara Greavu (CCA Derry, Derry 2017);
Art School and Exchange “The Square” with Jennie guy (Paper Visual Art Dublin 2017)
Greifers of Bandung, with the MA Art Praxis, ed. Tirdad Zolghadr and Sarah Pierce (Dutch Art Institute , Arnhem 2016)
Gorse, chapter “Learning Pieces” with Roy Clair Potter (Gorse, Dublin 2016)
Occasional Table, chapter “Politics of Study” (Open Editions 2015)
2,3, on the work of Sora Kim chapter “Voices/Low to High” (Korean Cultural Centre, Seoul 2015)
Timing: On the Temporal Dimension of Exhibiting, Barbara Clausen, chapter on Sarah Pierce “Future Exhibitions”, ed. Beatrice von Bismarck (Sternberg New York 2014)
Sketches of Universal History Compiled from Several Authors, edited by Rike Frank and published by Book Works (London 2013)
