Open Call:
Dry Facts And the Judgement of Imagination
“My dry facts have too little poetry in them to reach judgment through the medium of the imagination”
On the Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland, George Petrie, 1854.
Dry Facts And the Judgement of Imagination invites works that explore the tensions between systemic observation and artistic portrayal. These works will form an online exhibition in the form of a national database for built heritage. We are seeking proposals from artists and writers that are playful in considering this format.
The selected artist will expand on an existing artwork or idea. The selected writer will make a text that departs from that artwork during a period of engagement with the artist and curator Cóilín O’Connell across November 2025. The exhibition will go online in December 2025.
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Dry Facts And the Judgement of Imagination takes the career and sometimes contradictory methodology and artworks of George Petrie (1790–1866) as a point of reference. Petrie is cited as being the founder of ‘systematic and scientific archaeology in Ireland’, he was also a well known artist, prolific in producing paintings and illustrations of artifacts, historical buildings, landscapes and ruins.
While employed by the historical department of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, Petrie was responsible for documenting Ireland's geology, ruins and artefacts. The department was closed in 1842 in what is speculated to have been a politically motivated decision by the British government. Petrie’s work was considered to be at odds with establishment interests, fanning a growing national sentiment through proudly demonstrating Ireland's distinct heritage.
In letters, Petrie claimed to ‘-adhere to local as well as general truth at whatever cost to the pictorial’, though in practice he didn’t let the actual topography of a landscape or ruin get in the way of producing his desired compositions. The work of Petrie which is ostensibly ‘factual’ is infiltrated by poetry, while his ‘poetic’ output is inflected with dry facts.
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Any medium that can be hosted on a website is welcome, including but not limited to drawing, photography, digital collage, 3D animation, video, or sound.
A writer will make a new text that departs from the work of the visual artist. This could take the form of art writing, fiction, creative nonfiction, or criticism.
The open call is particularly relevant for artists whose practices touch on topics including place, the built environment, memory, landscape, archives, national collections, record keeping, archaeology, heritage, folklore or art history.
This project is small in scale with exciting narrow parameters. Both artist and writer will engage with each other and with Cóilín across November 2025 to develop and resolve the exhibition output.
Participants will each receive fees of €250.
Deadline: October 31st 2025 at 8pm.
Please apply using this Google Form.
Alternatively, email us a PDF using this downloadable document to guide you.
Cóilín O’Connell is a multimedia artist from Dublin. As Brass Neck Press he publishes artists zines. Through a process of collecting and editing found and original image, object and text his work considers antagonisms between the methodical and the poetic for proposing pasts, presents and futures.
Telegram Channel/art blog of Cóilín O’Connell:
https://t.me/+K4cpoS8O0QkyNTI0
Website:
www.coilinoconnell.net
Curated by Cóilín O’Connell and produced by Screen Service.