GUEST CURATOR DR SELINA GUINNESS OUTLINES PROGRAMME HIGHLIGHTS FOR DUBLIN ART BOOK FAIR IN DECEMBER.
Each year, Dublin Art Book Fair (DABF) is produced by Temple Bar Gallery + Studios and presents a wide range of unique artist books and titles from creative, small, and independent publishers alongside an events programme of talks, tours, workshops and book launches. As part of the wider DABF programme, a Guest Curator is invited to create their own programme of events and selection of titles under a chosen theme.
As DABF 2025 Guest Curator, my theme ‘Flock’ examines all thing pastoral. This includes topics such as humans and beasts as herding creatures; the relational arts of shepherding; the impact of flocks on habitats, and how wary scapegoats, too, may flock together to combat predation. Two decades of farming sheep in the Dublin Mountains while teaching at IADT have focused my mind on the kinds of habitat required to sustain different flocks – when one ewe fails to thrive, the whole flock needs to move onto better pasture.
In September, my first event for DABF was a successful preview at Philip Maguire’s farm on Newtown Hill, Glencullen. This farm walk and herding demonstration introduced a small group to the farming community who work to make a living from grazing animals in full view of the city. Returning to TBG+S, the remaining events I have curated for the DABF 2025 programme aim to provide a creative commons, where human flocks can meet, graze and find sustenance in mutual regard and a shared commitment to collective welfare.
DABF 2025 launches on Thursday 4 December in TBG+S main gallery with a Guest Curator’s Talk to discuss ten titles chosen to expand on this theme, with the opening reception to follow.
On Friday 5 December is Cowboys & Shepherds, Fieldwork & Studio, a curatorial panel discussion with acclaimed artists and farmers, Miriam O’Connor and Orla Barry, about what counts as work in art and agriculture, co-moderated with Adam Stead (SETU). When wool is worthless, and farming beef-cattle barely viable, how do we value pastoral lives? What does it mean to breed, feed and mind the sheep and cows we send to slaughter? We will focus on the work of raising flocks and explore the lives of shepherds and cowherds as disruptive pinch-points in late-stage capitalism, as they tend to people, place, produce and practice in the contested rural environment.
On Friday 12 December, the second of my curatorial panel talks, Of Human Flocks & Other Species, sees acclaimed artist, Isabel Nolan, and two exceptional writers, Darran Anderson and Cathy Sweeney, discuss the complexities of their relations with particular flocks, human and non-human. How do other species instruct us in what counts as work and care? The conversation will explore the ambivalence of artists and writers as shepherds and sheep in negotiating real and creative habitats, drawing on Nolan’s dynamic practice, and two literary works sparked by a compulsive desire for perspective: Darran Anderson’s Derry memoir, Inventory (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2020), and Cathy Sweeney’s debut novel, Breakdown (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2024). We will take a hard look at flock dynamics, and the new habitats formed by strays, scapegoats and outcasts, while questioning how artists fare when penned up individually.
A highlight of DABF 2025 is a new Publisher’s Series made possible through a partnership with the Culture Office of the Creative Europe Desk (Ireland). For this, we are inviting acclaimed Palestinian author, Adania Shibli, and her Fitzcarraldo Editions publisher, Tamara Sampey-Jawad, to discuss her astonishing novel, Minor Detail (2017). A Palestinian woman sets out to locate the site of a war crime committed in 1948, only to find the familiar maps to be of no use in navigating disputed territories. Minor Detail vividly enacts the experience of military surveillance, violent dispossession, and land confiscation suffered under occupation.
This special event on Saturday 6 December will reflect on the work of Fitzcarraldo Editions, a staple at the Dublin Art Book Fair, and the vital importance of literary translation in protecting our intellectual commons against aggressive polarisation. In addition to Minor Detail, and in keeping with the DABF theme ‘Flock’, our honoured guest, Adania Shibli, will present selected works by Palestinian artists who have continued to create, and counter subjection, while living under colonial and genocidal conditions.
Full details of DABF 2025 (4 – 14 December), including the events I have curated and mentioned above, are available on the TBG+S website. DABF 2025 is proudly sponsored by Henry J Lyons and supported by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature.
Dr Selina Guinness is Guest Curator of Dublin Art Book Fair 2025. She is also Head of Teaching and Learning at IADT, where she works to promote transdisciplinary pedagogies across IADT’s provision.
iadt.ie/about/staff/dr-selina-guinness
