Please Touch:
Tactile Encounters

Curated by Chris Clarke and Fiona Kearney

The sense of touch implies a relationship of intimacy. However, while we can look closely at artworks, museums must usually discourage direct handling in order to protect fragile and delicate surfaces. Please Touch is an exception, allowing a physical response to works by four Irish contemporary artists whose individual practices often emphasise texture and tangibility.

Our audiences are invited to get up close and personal, feeling the textures of the artwork, its folds and crevices, edges and angles, and the ways in which different materials become integrated into a single object. From intricate geometrical shapes to skin-like resin surfaces, assemblages of diverse materials to artworks you can wear, Please Touch emphasises the value of an embodied encounter with visual art. 

The banner image above shows Katie Watchorn’s A Calf Remembered, 2018. Her practice is rooted in the materiality of rural farming, highlighting the processes of contemporary and ancestral Irish life and traditions which are often understated or overlooked.