TEAM
Kate Strain is founding CEO and Artistic Director of Kunstverein Projects, Ireland. In 2022 she established Kunstverein Aughrim, a curatorial production office that accompanies artistic practice through creative production. From 2016–2021 Strain was Artistic Director of Grazer Kunstverein, Austria, where she curated a rolling programme of newly commissioned exhibitions and public projects. Prior to that she was Acting Curator at Project Arts Centre, Dublin; a participant of de Appel Curatorial Programme, Amsterdam; a participant of the Young Curators Residency Programme at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; and a graduate of MA Visual Arts Practice, IADT Dun Laoghaire and BA History of Art and Architecture, Trinity College Dublin. Strain collaborates on curatorial research and commissioning projects RGKSKSRG with Rachael Gilbourne and the Department of Ultimology with Fiona Hallinan. Strain is a member of IKT, the international association of curators of contemporary art, and regularly lectures in art history, curatorial practice and creative production.
Dr Michelle Darmody is Executive Director of Kunstverein Projects and Programme Coordinator of the Creative Producer Programme. Darmody’s work spans art, food and sustainability education. She has overseen development of large scale cultural events such as Eat the Streets, for Dublin City Council and Summer Rising in IMMA, and more recently project managed an initiative funded by the Department of the Environment helping communities set up food sharing spaces called Our Shared Plate. Darmody completed her PhD through GradCam and the Culinary Arts Dept in TU Dublin, previous to that she studied art in MTU Crawford College of Art and Design and did a masters entitled the Art and the Contemporary World in NCAD. Darmody is on the board of Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, as well as being an award winning writer for The Irish Examiner and author of Seed to Supper. She established The Cake Café and Slice in Dublin as well as setting up social enterprises such as Our Table. Arts based practice runs through everything she does.
Alex Syn is an Irish graphic designer working under the studio name The First 47. The studio specialises in design for print, web and visual identity for a wide range of clients in the cultural, commercial and academic fields. The First 47 has worked with Ireland at Venice, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Kerlin Gallery, EVA International, FRUIT SHOP, Annex, the Irish Museum of Modern Art and more. Established in Dublin, the studio is currently based in Belfast.
Shane Malone-Murphy is a graduate of Sculpture and Combined Media at LSAD (2023) and holds a Professional Certificate in Sustainable Exhibition Making from NCAD (2024). He works with Kunstverein Aughrim as Technical Support and Sustainability Consultant. Selected solo and group exhibitions include Say Again, This Place, Courthouse Arts Centre, Tinahely (2025), From Dust, Platform Arts, Belfast (2025), and Daisy, Daisy-, The Complex, Dublin (2024), Take Care To Leave A Trace, Luan Gallery, Athlone (2024). Other highlights include being selected for the Student Forum at The Douglas Hyde Gallery (2024), Exhibition Mediator for the Irish Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, receiving the Arts Council Agility Award (2024), and research funding from the Wicklow County Artist Scheme (2024). Malone-Murphy was also shortlisted for the Derek Hill Residency Award at the British School at Rome.
Olamide Alao is a curator, writer and creative producer who has worked with Kunstverein Aughrim across programme development and communications. A graduate of Law and English, their practice spans festival programming and collaborative cultural projects, including directing the 2024 Directed by Her film festival, contributing to exhibition projects with Temple Bar Gallery + Studios and Random Photo Gallery, and founding the Archived Series. Their work centres on cultural collaboration and collective forms of storytelling.
Emma Murphy has worked in commercial galleries for over twenty years across London, New York, and Ireland. Her work combines commercial experience with artist-centred and research-led programming. She is the Founding Director of Emma Murphy Contemporary, a commercial gallery focused on the promotion and presentation of under-represented voices. EMC also works with artists and organisations on strategic development, audience engagement, and income generation. Murphy previously held senior roles at Sadie Coles HQ, London, where she managed financial planning and administration for major exhibitions and international art fairs, alongside artist liaison, sales, and client development. She has also worked with Hauser & Wirth, London, and Thomas Erben Gallery, New York. She leads The Women of Ireland, an ongoing research and digital project focusing on historically overlooked Irish women artists and thinkers through curatorial research and public engagement. Murphy holds a Master’s degree in Contemporary Art from Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London.
Jackson Byrne is a mediator at Kunstverein Aughrim. He is also an artist based in Wicklow. He works with a variety of media, combining video, photography, digital game-design and drawing. He explores techniques of combining drawing and video work, as well as using digital environments to create narrative films. He is particularly interested in ideas of reality and looking at the possibilities of the advancements of artificial life and the impact it could have on humanity. He has taken part in Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art Design and Technology group exhibitions such as New Translations (2019) at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and Propositions (2022) at IADT Campus.
Heeyun Hwa was a Researcher for Kunstverein Aughrim in 2024. Hwa studied ceramics (B.F.A.) and recently completed an M.F.A. in Public Arts and New Artistic Strategies at Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany. She crafts works with tangible materials derived from conceptual ideas. Her sculpture, research, and installation intertwine with her narratives in a larger context of propaganda, ideology, and social structure. She is especially interested in monuments and symbolic objects (gestures), which portend a spatial discourse for understanding real events. After moving to Germany from South Korea, her work increasingly focused on public interventions and installation, considering monuments and their effects on the public. Her practice explores peace and sociopolitical landscapes, including how political ‘materials’ can be delivered outside of a political context.
Christina Simmerer was an Associate Producer for Kunstverein Aughrim in 2022. She is a cultural producer currently based in Graz, Austria. She was production curator at Grazer Kunstverein for over five years, and was a central part of the team at Club Hybrid, an experimental, practice-based initiative, dedicated to generating discourse around architecture, urban participation, city development and hybridity. Situated on the outskirts of Graz, Club Hybrid is an active intervention: during the season it questions the existing conditions of current planning politics and explores and discusses ways in which the current limitations of space can be stretched and reinterpreted - an urban and applied practice of (beautiful) living and producing.
Spirit Guides: Kunstverein is guided by the humour, vision and patience of Moira Brady Averill, Ernst Fischer and Vincent O’Connor.
