Open Call: Artlink members exhibition
126 Artist-run Gallery & Studios, Galway & Artlink, Fort Dunree, Inishowen invite submissions from Artlink Member artists for a group exhibition entitled ‘Anarchive’, curated by Ciara Corscadden Hennessy of the 126 Gallery Board of directors, taking place at Fort Dunree from 2nd -31st August 2025
Eligibility: Open to all members of Artlink at any stage of their career. There is no application fee.
You can join the Artlink Membership here: JOIN ARTLINK MEMBERS
Anarchive
Traditionally, portraiture has functioned as an archive of power, memory, and presence. In Anarchive, we are interested in the portraits that escape this function.
Anarchive seeks works that dismantle the portrait—not as a record, but as a rupture.
We invite artists to submit proposals and existing works that challenge archival logic—portraits that reject fixity, completeness, or singularity. We are interested in the unstable, the fugitive, the incomplete. Portraits that exist in flux, that blur the boundaries between presence and absence, human and non-human, seen and unseen.
THEMES & POSSIBILITIES
Erasure & Fragmentation: Portraits that decay, mutate, or resist permanence.
Non-Human Portraiture: Landscapes as faces, objects as subjects, absence as presence.
Anti-Portraits: Works that question if a “portrait” must even contain a face.
Performance & Ephemera: Gestures, traces, and vanishing acts.
Systems of Power: Who is archived? Who is left out? Who decides?
Abstract & Speculative Portraiture: The imagined, the impossible, the unreal.
MEDIUMS
Painting, sculpture, film, performance, digital art, sound, installation, text, and beyond—we welcome all forms of experimentation. We are also able to consider outdoor work.
Anarchive is not a record—it is an unmaking.
This call embraces poetic urgency while leaving room for radical interpretation. It frames the exhibition as a space of resistance rather than preservation, inviting artists to think beyond traditional confines.
Deadline for applications Sunday 13th July at mid-night
You may submit up to 3 works for consideration in your submission using the google form below.
By submitting your works for the members exhibition please note that you are responsible for insurance of your work while in transit and in the gallery.
Selected works should be delivered to the gallery on Saturday 26th, Monday 28th, Tuesday 29th
Works delivered by An Post (or courier) will be returned using An Post. Please ensure the work is securely packaged.
About the curator
Ciara Corscadden Hennessy is a Galway-based visual artist and curator whose practice critically engages with inherited technological, social, and institutional systems that shape our experiences of identity, memory, and embodiment. Working across performance, installation, and lens-based media, she uses artistic practice as a site to interrogate dominant narratives surrounding productivity, value, and visibility.
Her recent work explores the complex intersections of care, labour, and gender within broader economic and cultural frameworks. She is particularly interested in how structures of value are constructed and how creative practice can serve as a space for resistance and repair.
Ciara is currently a Co-Director at 126 Gallery & Studios. Recent curatorial projects include Fite Fuaite with Bbeyond, a collaborative performance art event, and Dust to Dust at 126 Gallery & Studios.
