WHAT IS CREATIVE PRODUCTION?
What is Creative Production?
Symposium shaped by Creative Producer Programme
BrookLodge & Macreddin Village, Aughrim Pavilion and Kunstverein Aughrim, County Wicklow, Ireland
10am–6pm, Thursday 8 October 2026
Register to attend here: Eventbrite
What is Creative Production? is a symposium that brings together artists, curators, creative producers and practitioners working across the field of contemporary visual arts. Joining participants from Kunstverein Aughrim’s Creative Producer Programme alongside invited international contributors, a public forum as part of the symposium, on Thursday 8 October, continues an ongoing conversation around the role, visibility, labour and future potential of creative production within artistic practice in Ireland and beyond.
One might speak about creative production as the work behind the work: the intellectual, relational, practical and often invisible labour through which artistic ideas become possible. This symposium asks who performs this labour, what forms of knowledge it draws upon, how it is valued, and what kinds of infrastructure are needed to sustain it.
While the term Creative Producer remains largely undefined, it is also rapidly evolving. In February 2026, Kunstverein Aughrim convened and hosted What is a Creative Producer? – a gathering that brought together over 100 visual arts practitioners for a day of discussion and reflection at Mermaid Arts Centre. Through provocations, conversations and breakout sessions, the event explored the role and function of the Creative Producer within the visual arts landscape in Ireland. The event created a space for practitioners and professionals to publicly interrogate, problematise and consider the term through discursive reflection and collective enquiry. Discussions highlighted the complexity and overlap of roles involved in creative production, bringing together curators, producers, programmers, production managers, artists, technicians, arts administrators, directors and others working across contemporary visual arts production. In October 2026, Kunstverein Aughrim presents a sequel to that event, inviting international perspectives to revisit the same question once more, with feeling. Join the programme in Aughrim for a day of enquiry, discussion, thinking and sharing.
Contributors
Rachel Botha, Clodagh Assata Boyce, Jenny Brady, Simnikiwe Buhlungu, Ahmad Darkhabani, Iarlaith Ní Fheorais, The Domestic Godless, Dr Isobel Harbison, Sarah Hayden, Onur Karaoğlu, Dennis McNulty, Jennie Moran, Aisling Murray, JL Murtaugh, Nathan O’Donnell, Justin O’Shaughnessy, Marta Pellerini, Prof. Andrea Phillips, Sara Sassanelli, Seán Ward, Lyónn Wolf, Theresa Zwerschke, Bia! Zine/Ciaran Bohan
Schedule
Morning (10am–1pm)
Tea and Coffee in BrookHall River Lounge
Welcome by Kate Strain, Olamide Alao and Isobel Harbison
Provocations by Theresa Zwerschke, Simnikiwe Buhlungu, Onur Karaoğlu
In-conversation: Andrea Phillips & Justin O’Shaughnessy
Screening of Receiver by Jenny Brady
Reading of Caps On / Caps Off by Sarah Hayden
In-conversation: Iarlaith Ní Fheorais & Sara Sassanelli
Early Afternoon (1pm–3pm)
Light Lunch in BrookHall River Lounge
Provocations by Ahmad Darkhabani, JL Murtaugh, Lyónn Wolf
Open Mic chaired by Isobel Harbison
Late Afternoon (3pm–6pm)
Relocate to Aughrim Pavilion for The New Abyss by The Domestic Godless
Table Reading of Threshold by Jennie Moran
Facilitated Feedback Session by Aisling Murray
Walk to Kunstverein for The Shape of an Archive by Clodagh Assata Boyce
Take Me Home by Ciaran Bohan / Bia! Zine
Access
The BrookLodge & Macreddin Village has designated wheelchair-accessible guest rooms with adapted bathrooms, accessible public paths, marked parking spaces, and level or ramped ground-floor navigation across the main BrookLodge and BrookHall buildings.
Aughrim Pavilion is wheelchair accessible and has accessible bathroom facilities.
Kunstverein Aughrim is not step free, it has five steps at the entrance, with no handrails. Kunstverein Aughrim is located in the centre of the village, with busy roads either side. The footpaths are wide and uneven. There is a curb cut 40 feet from the entrance. Kunstverein Aughrim has one inaccessible bathroom.
The event will include ISL interpretation by Ela Cichocka and Carol McArdle.
A quiet room is available throughout the day and attendees are free to come and go.
We can offer a small number of travel bursaries to contribute to attendee’s travel costs where helpful. Please email office@kunstverein.ie for more information.
Transport
We encourage attendees to consider using public transport and/or car-pooling where possible.
If traveling by public transport from Dublin we recommend taking the 8:25am Wexford Expressway Route 2 bus from Busaras arriving to Arklow (Lidl stop) for 9:50am. We can arrange minibus pick-up for attendees using this service, and we can arrange drop-off in time for the 18:19 service back to Dublin.
Please let us know if you require pick-up/drop-off by emailing Olamide Alao on oa@kunstverein.ie
If you have any questions about the venues, other transport logistics, access facilities, or wish to flag any special requirements please contact creative producer Olamide Alao at the above email address, or our team on office@kunstverein.ie
Locations
BrookLodge & Macreddin Village, Macreddin West, Co Wicklow, Y14 A362
Aughrim Pavilion, Rednagh Road, Aughrim, Co Wicklow, Y14 WK38
Kunstverein Aughrim, Main Street, Aughrim Lower, Co Wicklow, Y14 K120
Contributor’s Biographies
Rachel Botha is a curator, her expanded curatorial practice responds to the local context and investigates how people perceive their social framework. She holds a BA in History of Art & Architecture from Trinity College Dublin, and a MA in Visual Culture & Critical Studies from Technological University Dublin. Botha was the Provost’s Curatorial Fellow at The Douglas Hyde, Trinity College Dublin, a co-director of Catalyst Arts, Belfast, and the Emerging Curator in Residence at the Kilkenny Arts Office. She was appointed the Emerging Editor of Bloomers Magazine, and the Early Career Curator in Residence at the Regional Cultural Centre and Glebe House & Gallery in Donegal. Recently she was the Assistant Curator at Project Arts Centre, and supported the Irish Pavilion in the Venice Biennale 2024. Botha is currently the curator of the Tea Houses, a newly activated space to host a responsive public art programme situated by the River Nore in Kilkenny.
Clodagh Assata Boyce is a cultural practitioner based in Dublin. Influenced by Black feminist praxis, their curatorial and artistic projects challenge extractive logics by turning towards opacity and interdependence as strategies of resistance. Their practice spans film programming, performance, writing, commissioning, exhibition-making and archival work. Clodagh's curatorial work has been featured at Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival, PS² Belfast and Outburst Queer Arts Festival. They have presented work at FILET London and Contemporary Irish Arts Centre Los Angeles. Clodagh has recently developed projects with Studio Museum in Harlem and Kunstverein Aughrim.
Jenny Brady is a Dublin based artist filmmaker whose work explores the structures and conditions through which communication takes place. Her films have been presented internationally at LUX, Open City Documentary Festival, Prismatic Ground, New York Film Festival, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Viennale, Essay Film Festival, and Docs Ireland (with AEMI), as well as at Tramway in Glasgow (with LUX Scotland), Project Arts Centre, IMMA, Talbot Rice Gallery, EVA International, TENT Rotterdam, Biennale Son and McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, among others. Her work has also been featured by MUBI and This Long Century and is distributed by LUX, an international arts agency that supports and promotes artists’ moving image practices and the ideas that surround them.
Simnikiwe Buhlungu is an artist from Johannesburg, South Africa and currently living and working in Amsterdam. Interested in knowledge production[s] — how it is produced, by whom and how it is disseminated — Buhlungu locates socio-historical and everyday phenomena by navigating these questions and their inexhaustible potential answers via research based methodologies. Through a research-based practice, she works through sound, text, installation and publishing, to map points of cognisance which situate various layers of awareness as reverberated ecologies. Recently she has signed up for archery classes, is thinking about language attrition and attempting to distribute publications via Simunye Resource Works (a publishing house that is forever yet-to-exist). Buhlungu was recently appointed Professor of Fine Arts at Hochschule für Bildende Künste–Städelschule. Recent presentations include Kunstinstituut Melly, the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Chisenhale Gallery, Kunst im Tunnel and the 59th Venice Biennale. Buhlungu was a resident at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam from 2020 to 2022 and previously taught at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Buhlungu’s work is held in collections including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Frans Hals Museum, Van Abbemuseum, KADIST and Frac MÉCA. In 2025, besides Puleng; dontsa-ring and roving preoccupations was co-published by Chisenhale Gallery, Kunstinstituut Melly and Mousse Publishing.
Ahmad Darkhabani is a curator and architect based in Vienna and Graz, Austria. Darkhabani’s practice explores the relationship between contemporary art and architecture, with a particular interest in how both shape social realities. His curatorial portfolio includes co-curating piercing through at DAS WEISSE HAUS, Vienna (2025); The Actress by Aimée Zito Lema and Becket MWN; and Cameo by Bianca Baldi at Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (2021–2022). His essays have been published in GAT: Magazine for Architecture, Art, and Cultural Critique, Graz (2025), and on the Al-Jumhuriya platform, Berlin (2025). Darkhabani studied Architecture at Damascus University and completed an MSc in Architecture at Graz University of Technology. Darkhabani is also a lecturer at the (IZK) Institute for Contemporary Art within the Faculty of Architecture at Graz University of Technology. Most recently, he served as Head of the Education & Outreach Department at the Klima Biennale Wien, a project by KunstHausWien. He has also held positions in the Art & Architecture Education Department at the Universalmuseum Joanneum, which comprises Schloss Eggenberg, Kunsthaus Graz, and Neue Galerie Graz.
Iarlaith Ní Fheorais is a curator and writer based between Galway and London. As the curator of the 21st edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts she staged exhibitions, public programmes and a publication responding to the legacy of mass psychiatric incarceration in Ireland. She’s the author of There’s a Tunnel Under Ballybrit Business Park (2026), a critical examination of the Irish MedTech industry and is currently co-directing a film with artist Sarah Browne on art’s role in psychiatry and confinement. Ní Fheorais has written for publications such as frieze magazine, Burlington Contemporary, Viscose Journal, and Paper Visual Art, among others. She has contributed to public programmes at Paul Mellon Centre, Chelsea School of Art, Rietveld Academie, and the National College of Art and Design, Dublin on subjects ranging from curatorial practice, writing on disability and medicine and access in the visual arts. She has sat on numerous selection panels including EVA’s 41st Platform Commission, Unlimited International Open Award and Edinburgh Arts Festival Platform Award 2023. Her work is supported by The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon and the creative production supports initiative field:arts through her role as Associate Producer.
The Domestic Godless is an artist-led project founded by Stephen Brandes and Mick O’Shea, later joined by Irene Murphy. The group works with food as an artistic material, combining cooking, performance, sculpture, installation and social interaction to explore the cultural meanings attached to food. Founded in 2003 under the Cork Artist’s Collective, The Domestic Godless has developed a distinctive practice of playful and irreverent gastronomic experimentation. Projects have included unusual dishes, installations and performance dinners that question ideas around taste, tradition, consumption and the cultural values attached to food. Work has been presented at venues and festivals including Crawford Art Gallery, Sirius Arts Centre, Galway Arts Centre, Solstice Arts Centre, Uillinn Arts Centre and the Athens Biennale. Projects such as The Food, The Bad & The Ugly, Invasive Pests and 20,000 Leagues Under Cork Harbour bring audiences together around food while challenging expectations about what a meal, a gallery or an artistic experience can be.
Dr Isobel Harbison is an art historian specialising in performance and moving image in modern and contemporary art and Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths, London. She writes often about the image and the politics of its production. Harbison's first monograph, Performing Image (MIT Press, 2019), addresses art's role in an age of technology capitalism and social media. Her second book, Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, explores the occluded labour and cultural legacy of a female neon designer in 1950s Las Vegas (MUP, 2027). Harbison's third book is in progress, focusing on art and independent film in the north of Ireland from 1968. She is Research Associate (2025-26) at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, where she is creating an oral history archive for the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland called Recording History. She has lectured and examined in faculties in the UK, US and Ireland.
Sarah Hayden is a writer and Professor of Experimental Writing and Art at the University of Southampton. Her work explores intersections of voice, text, art and access. From 2019-2023, she led “Voices in the Gallery”. In 2022, Sarah edited slow emergency siren, ongoing: Accessing Handsworth Songs (LUX) and in 2024, she collaborated with Liza Sylvestre and Christopher Robert Jones on the Blue Description Project, which was presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), BFI (London), IFI (Dublin) MIT List Arts Center, and elsewhere. She is the author of Curious Disciplines: Mina Loy and Avant-Garde Artisthood (University of New Mexico Press), co-author, with Paul Hegarty of Peter Roehr: Field Pulsations (Snoeck). Recent publications include essays on “unvoiceover” (Angelaki) and sensorial sovereignty (boundary2:online), and the artwriting commissions “Me mouth noise/Fox ears twitch” for Charlie Prodger's The Offering Formula (secession, Vienna 2023) and as if […] wearing anklesocks for Sarah Browne/Kunstverein Aughrim (2024). Sarah’s new book, Voiceworks, will be published by University of Minnesota Press in October 2026.
Onur Karaoğlu / Onur Hamilton Karaoğlu is an artist, writer and director working across theatre, performance and video. Since 2010, Karaoğlu’s original and adapted writing and directing works have been presented by festivals and institutions including Wiener Festwochen, Dancing On The Edge, Media Art Xploration and Volksbühne. Karaoğlu’s installations and video works have been presented at Bahar during the 2017 Sharjah Biennial, as well as SPOT, Operation Room and Artnivo. Karaoğlu is a founding member of Studio 4 Istanbul, an organisation producing theatre and film, and of Köşe, a performance space in Istanbul’s Yeldeğirmeni district that developed into an international performance festival. Between 2014 and 2019, Karaoğlu served as Director of the Museum of Innocence in Istanbul, based on the novel by Orhan Pamuk. Karaoğlu teaches performance at Boğaziçi University and Koç University. Karaoğlu studied Sociology at Boğaziçi University and holds an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University in New York.
Dennis McNulty is an artist, researcher, music-maker and instrument designer who lives and works in Dublin, Ireland. He is currently a funded researcher in Prof. Dan Kilper's research group at Trinity College Dublin, where he works on developing epistemic infrastructure for cross-disciplinary collaboration in fields such as quantum networking research. For a list of activities see www.dennismcnulty.com
Jennie Moran is a visual artist whose work explores hospitality as a creative and connective philosophy. Blending sculpture and food, she founded Luncheonette, an art/hospitality project at National College of Art and Design in 2013. She lectures widely, mentors in organisational hospitality and curates discursive events. She is chair of the Oxford Food Symposium and the Dublin Gastronomy Symposium. Jennie is the author of 'How to Soften Corners' and was named Best Emerging Voice at the Irish Food Writing Awards.
Aisling Murray is a Creative Producer and Cultural Programmer with over 10 years’ experience covering exhibitions, festivals, literature, spoken word, theatre and dance. She is the founder of Ireland’s art and technology festival, Beta Festival, which critically engages with technology's impact on society through exhibitions, discussions and performance. Murray recently produced the Ireland pavilion exhibitions for Expo Osaka 2025 and was Head of Programming at Science Gallery Dublin (the founding Science Gallery in the international network) up until its closure, where she produced creative programmes converging art, science, technology and society from concept to full realisation in Ireland and internationally. Murray is interested in work at the intersection of art, society and technology with specific interest in immersive technologies, artificial intelligence, industry collaboration and socially engaged work. She was a mentor for Arebyte’s Hotel Generation programme 2025 for the next generation of digital artists in the UK.
JL Murtaugh is an artist, curator, writer and consultant working primarily under the name Syndicate. Since 2014, Syndicate has operated as a fluid, nomadic contemporary art platform, producing exhibitions, events and publications through long-term collaborations with artists internationally. Murtaugh is currently a curator at Rupert in Vilnius, overseeing its residency, alternative education, and public programmes. Previous roles include Artistic Director of Autarkia, Vilnius, from 2020–2023 and Director of Tenderpixel in London from 2012–2014. Murtaugh’s artistic and curatorial practice often considers the relationships between individual artistic labour, institutions and collective production. At lower_cavity, Murtaugh developed Volume, One, an initial presentation of a larger book project conceived as an indexed record of past artistic work and professional activity. Murtaugh studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and Columbia College, following earlier studies in architecture and design. Syndicate has previously been based in Los Angeles, Cologne and London and is now based in Vilnius.
Nathan O'Donnell is a writer and curator who works in the fields of experimental publishing, artists' writing, and participatory practice. He is one of the coeditors of PVA (Journal + Books) and he also regularly makes publications through artistic collaborations, commissions, and public art projects. O’Donnell has been a curatorial associate on several projects at IMMA since 2018 and he also works across other organisations and institutions. He lectures on contemporary art and experimental publishing at NCAD and Trinity College Dublin.
Justin O’Shaughnessy is a cultural producer and adviser with more than 35 years of international experience across the arts and education sectors. O’Shaughnessy’s work spans governance, cultural production, site-specific projects, teaching, consultancy and venue management. O’Shaughnessy has worked across a wide range of artforms and practices, including projects focused on communities, participation, skills-sharing and what O’Shaughnessy describes as Critical Production. Recent and previous work includes producing four biennales in Timișoara for the Art Encounters Foundation and contributing to projects with Bradford 2025, Liverpool Biennial, SKOR in the Netherlands and KIN in Sweden. O’Shaughnessy also contributed to Timișoara 2023 – European Capital of Culture. O’Shaughnessy was part of the founding team of CARA in New York and served on the Tate Britain Advisory Committee from 2017 to 2025. O’Shaughnessy has also been a Trustee of Open School East in Margate since 2013.
Marta Pellerini is a working-class curator based in Rome. Pellerini expresses her curatorial research through artistic practices involving intersectional feminism and political and social struggles. In 2014, she obtained a Master’s degree in Contemporary Art History from La Sapienza University and in 2022 a Master’s degree in Gender Studies and Policies from Roma Tre University. Since 2018, Pellerini has been Visual Art Residency and Programme Curator at the British School at Rome, where she develops specific projects with artists in residence and with a wide range of Roman artists, curators, and artistic and social organisations. She has collaborated on several international projects such as the British Council’s UK/Italy 2020 Cultural Season and the Wales Venice 10 Fellowship supported by Arts Council Wales.
Professor Andrea Phillips is a writer and organiser working in the expanded field of contemporary visual art. For the past 30 years, Phillips has worked in and alongside people involved in the development of contemporary cultural institutions in the UK and internationally. This experience has shaped a practice of political and conceptual writing informed by social and collaborative dialogue with practitioners across contemporary art. Trained initially as a theatre director, and subsequently as a critical theorist and art historian, Phillips works as an outside eye and critical friend within the complex terrain of contemporary art. Her writing and research engage with the financial, class, gendered and racialised inequalities produced by cultural institutions, while remaining informed by the intelligence and agency of both recognised and unrecognised authors within the field. Phillips is currently Professor of Cultural Politics at Northumbria University, having previously held the position of BALTIC Professor. Previous professorships include positions at HDK Valand, University of Gothenburg, and Goldsmiths, University of London. Phillips is currently writing Contemporary Art and the Production of Inequality, forthcoming from Routledge in 2027.
Sara Sassanelli is co-founder of Alice Agency and Associate of Conditions studio programme. From 2019 to 2024, they were Curator of Live at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), where they programmed dance works and electronic music. Their work is iterative and practice-based, experimenting with the varied relationships between performer, audience and space. Often drawing on methods of self-organisation, collaboration and resource-sharing developed within DIY contexts, Sara's work investigates how meaning is made through interactions, unpredictability and risk. They work with artists who experiment across genres and engage with formal technique, social dance, pop culture, and punk sensibilities. In Alice Agency Sara has worked with Lily McMenamy, Florence Sinclair, Olan Monk, Billy Bultheel, Arthur Jafa, Mark Leckey, Tzekin, Paulius Janusonis, Yen Chun Lin & Gediminas Zygus and Nitetrax. They have produced and presented work at Bold Tendencies, ICA, Tate Britain & Tate Modern, the Royal Academy of Arts, Rewire, Atonal, Ormside Projects, Botanique, Volksbühne, and Goldsmiths University.
Seán Ward is a curator and researcher based in County Derry. His practice explores how colonial narratives may persist in cultural spaces, using curating as a method to engage with spatial justice, contested heritage, and the hyperlocal, and approaches curatorial work as both a research method and a tool for commoning knowledge. Ward holds a BA in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London, where he also studied with the Centre for Research Architecture. From 2023 to 2025, he was a Co-Director at Catalyst Arts, where he co-produced exhibitions, commissions, and public programmes. Ward currently works at CCA Derry~Londonderry, supporting public programmes and communications. His writing has appeared in Art Monthly and other independent publications. Across his practice, he continues to explore curating and writing as tools for situated, collaborative, and politically engaged cultural production.
Lyónn Wolf is an artist and writer currently engaged with de-productive trans & class poetics. His work unfolds a desire for structures of being away from the logics of reproductive colonial time towards the collective reimagining of political futures centred on pleasure & interdependence for queer, trans & crip social bodies. Wolf has developed a trilogy of works since 2014 dealing with queer & working class counter propositional spatial politics, historical & speculative: The Re-appropriation of Sensuality, Sex in Public & Domestic Optimism. Exhibitions include: The Project Arts Centre, The Grazer Kunstverein, Dundee Contemporary Arts, nGbK Berlin, Survival Kit Festival & De Appel.
Theresa Zwerschke is an artist, writer and cultural organiser based in London. Her practice brings together artistic research, collective study and performative methods, exploring the conditions of art as a tool for speculation, self-organisation and self-determination. Zwerschke is currently a PhD candidate in the Visual Cultures Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. Through the conceptual figure of the amateur-as-producer (Roberts, 2006), her dissertation project examines amateurism as a form of cultural production in the context of German cultural policy after 1989. Together with Steph Joyce, she is the co-founder of Catwings, an initiative engaging with the relation of self-organised culture to social movements and abolitionist strategies in the arts. With Catwings, they organise reading groups, workshops, research projects and events with changing collaborators. From 2023 to 2026, she worked in the team of the cultural street newspaper Arts of the Working Class in Berlin. Her reviews and essays have appeared in Arts of the Working Class, Site Zones, Gabble Magazine, Hinterlands Magazine and The Toe Rag, among others. Zwerschke holds an MA from the Dutch Art Institute and a Diploma from the Academy of Fine Arts, Leipzig.
Bia! Zine is an independent publishing and community storytelling project exploring food, memory, migration and identity within Global Majority communities in Ireland. Founded in 2022 by Victory Nwabu-Ekeoma, Bia! began as a personal exploration of Nigerian-Irish identity and has developed into a participatory publishing project bringing together stories, artwork, recipes, photography and personal archives. The project creates space for immigrant and diasporic communities to share cultural histories, experiences and relationships with food. Bia! approaches food as a way of connecting people, preserving memory and exploring questions of belonging, identity and cultural change. Each issue brings together contributions from artists, writers, cooks and community members connected to Ireland. The third issue includes work from nearly 60 contributors connected to Ireland across Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and mixed-heritage communities. Bia! Zine is independently published and released approximately every two years, alongside workshops, events and community gatherings. Ciaran Bohan is part of the Bia! Zine community, he is an Irish and Jamaican chef currently based in Dublin. His cooking is an expression of that mixed cultural heritage. Drawing from his travels around the world, Ciaran's approach to the culinary arts focuses on the community element of hospitality. Weaving big flavours, storytelling, education and fun throughout the dining experience is at the core of his practice.
The symposium is funded as part of the Culture Programme for Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2026. Kunstverein Projects CLG is supported by the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
