Writing About Your Art Practice (for Visual Artists)

This free workshop, is a good very good foundational course for our “Writing funding applications” workshop.

It equips visual artists with the conceptual and verbal tools to write effectively, creatively and honestly about their work.

Emphasis will be placed on the different tones and textures of writing on your art, while also focusing on how to verbally position your work within the Irish and international art landscape.

Focus areas:

– Artist profiles and personal statements

– Contextual positioning: biographical, environmental, psychological, political, social, ethical, market, art historical contexts

– Using writing the think through your practical work

Meet your tutor

James Merrigan is an artist and critic. For 15 years he has invented online and printed identities for his writing and publications, from +billion-journal (2010-17) to Small Night (2019—). In 2011 he was awarded the inaugural Critical Writing Award by Visual Artists Ireland and The LAB Dublin. As co-curator of Gorey School of Art’s Periphery Space for 8 years he has worked alongside Emma Roche to develop exhibitions such as “Soul–Beating” (2017) and “peripheriesPOST” (2023). Recent exhibitions and publications include WEAREFETISHISTS (Garter Lane Arts Centre, 2023), and TALK (Librairie Yvon Lambert, Paris, 2024). He has been invited to write for the “Death of Painting” chapter for Routledge’s forthcoming Companion to Contemporary Painting (2026), and was selected for Houston Texas-based F Magazine’s “In Memoriam” issue, 2026. This year he will print and exhibit screen-printed projects in collaboration with artists and artist-editors under Small Night Projects at Carthage Hall Lismore and Small Night Zine at Green on Red Gallery Dublin. He teaches at Gorey School of Art and lectures in Psychoanalysis and Art at Trinity College Dublin. His writing circa 2024-26 is found exclusively on SubStack at merrigan.substack.com and Small Night projects at smallnightzine.org