Artist and Curator Café- 20th November

DlrArts in partnership with Visual Artists Ireland, invite you to the Artist and Curator Café. This intensive, one-day networking and professional development event is designed specifically for contemporary practitioners across the region.

The theme for this session is “Exhibition Opportunities.” In an evolving arts landscape, the ability to self-organise, collaborate, and pitch effectively is more vital than ever. This event offers a unique platform to hear directly from industry experts and peers who are successfully navigating these paths.

What to Expect

• Curator Presentations: Gain insights from four guest curators— Rayne Booth, Rachael Gunning, Dermot Browne and Niamh Darling,—as they discuss DIY spaces, freelance producing, and how to build professional relationships with curators and galleries.
• Networking & Dialogue: Meet fellow artists from neighbouring counties in a relaxed, café-style environment to spark new collaborations and share resources.

Whether you are an early-career artist or an established practitioner, this event provides the tools and connections to help you manifest your own creative projects.

Rayne Booth 

Rayne Booth is a freelance curator and producer who has been highly engaged in the visual arts community in Ireland since 2004. Throughout her career, she has focused on creating opportunities for artists and audiences, collaborating directly with artists to develop new ideas, artworks, and infrastructure for the visual arts. Currently, Rayne is curator and Director of Superprojects, where she develops major commissioned projects for children and young people. Alongside the Contemporary Art Gallery Association, she has driven the development of the new Dublin Gallery Weekend initiative since 2023. Rayne is also currently acting Public Art Officer for Dublin City Council. She develops and manages national exhibition tours across multiple venues, working to date with the Irish/Brazilian artist duo Wagner/de Burca, London-based Irish artist Marianne Keating, and is currently in the planning stages of a tour of the work of Irish artists Alice Rekab and Barbara Knezevic.

Dermot Browne

Dermot Browne is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and mentor based in Cork, Ireland. With a practice rooted in visual culture, he brings over two decades of experience in curating, exhibiting, and mentoring artists across Ireland. Dermot is the founder of Crane Visual and One Space Culture CLG, initiatives focused on accessible, regenerative arts engagement. His work bridges creative leadership, sustainability, and wellbeing, informed by training in Design Thinking, Conscious Leadership, and cultural entrepreneurship. Through a range of Embodiment practices, exhibitions, and one-to-one mentorship, he supports artists in navigating both practice and purpose in a changing (and challenging) cultural landscape.

Niamh Darling 

Niamh Darling is a Dublin-based early-career curator, currently working as an Assistant Curator at The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art and Ireland at Venice 2026. Niamh’s curatorial practice is concerned with how social norms are shaped and sustained in the precarious conditions of life under late capitalism. In her previous role as the 2024 Provost’s Fellow in Curating at The Douglas Hyde, Niamh curated Living Conditions, an event exploring the precarity embedded in the built environment, featuring new and existing works by Avril Corroon, Evan Kelly and Eva Richardson McCrea. In 2025, Niamh was Production Assistant to Deirdre O’Mahony on her forthcoming major new performance and moving image work. Niamh has also co-produced live performances and events including Miss Powder Vacuum in 2025 at The Douglas Hyde and Fringe was Here for Dublin Fringe Festival 2024. She was editor of Worlding, a publication featuring commissioned work by the 2024 Student Forum, and her writing has been published by The Lab, Visual Artist’s Newspaper and Paper Visual Art. She was recipient of the 2025 Agility Award.

Rachael Gunning is an emerging curator based in Dublin and is currently the 2026 Provost’s Curatorial Fellow at the Douglas Hyde Gallery. Rachael holds a First-Class Honours MSc in Modern and Contemporary Art History from the University of Edinburgh, where she was awarded the Baldwin Brown Prize for her dissertation. Rachael has previously worked in the Talbot Rice Gallery assisting with curatorial projects and has acted as an exhibition co-ordinator for the exhibiting societies at the Royal Scottish Academy. She has delivered research papers on contemporary art at Munster Technological University, and her writing has been featured in the Visual Artists Newssheet. Rachael’s curatorial research centres on the infrastructural conditions shaping contemporary artistic production.