Photo Museum Ireland is delighted to offer this Photography Collage Workshop led by visual artists Darragh Shanahan & Helena Gouveia Monteiro who will guide you throughout the day.

Using found images and text from art magazines, photography magazines, book catalogs, newspapers, and their own images, students will participate in this fun workshop creating unique photo collages that puncture reality. The workshop will give students a brief history of collage as an art-form, looking at key artists who engage in political, satirical and fantastical approaches to the medium, and immerse them in the practical side of collage-making. Students will get a chance to challenge their visual and creative skills through image selection and experimentation with different juxtapositions and narratives – you will get to imagine what never existed. After a few introductory speed collage-making sessions, students will spend time constructing their main collage image guided by the tutors.

They will then learn how to rephotograph this new work using copy stand techniques and scanning to turn your masterpiece into a unique postcard image. There will be an option to co-publish this image in a signature signed limited edition set to be sold in Photo Museum Ireland’s bookshop. We will then create image titles using the Brion Gysin & William Burroughs technique of word collage, splicing, jumbling and selecting texts from a word bank.

What do we provide?
All materials will be provided on the day including photographic materials, however you are welcome to bring your own photos and images to be reinterpreted.

What will be the outcome?
Participants will learn to challenge their visual and creative skills, creating unique compositions from a combination of personal and found photographic imagery. They will learn different ways to create narrative imagery from existing and found images, from creative concept to technique and execution.The collages produced in this workshop will culminate in a series of original postcards to be displayed for sale in the museum shop.

Who can book?
No experience is required, we welcome everybody to participate in this fun workshop.

About the Tutors

Helena Gouveia Monteiro is a visual artist and experimental filmmaker from Portugal living in Dublin.
Her work has been shown internationally in both gallery and cinema spaces, including International Film Festival Rotterdam, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, and Curtas Vila do Conde. Purkyně’s Dusk (2021) is distributed by Light Cone Paris, and Man of Aral (2023) was supported by the Arts Council of Ireland Film Project Award.
Concerned with the history of technical images and influenced by experimental cinema and media archaeology, she creates films, books, and multi-media installations that engage different levels of visual and cultural recognition to question our perception of language and audio-visual experiences.
She is the co-founder of Stereo Editions, an independent publishing collective of artists’ editions, currently co-directs the LUX Critical Forum Dublin, and is a member of ‘Abominable/Navire Argo Film Coop.

Darragh Shanahan is a visual artist based in Dublin. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) Degree in Photography from TU Dublin. In 2023 he was shortlisted for the Zurich Portrait Prize at the National Gallery of Ireland. Shanahan’s first photography book Love is a Stranger was shortlisted for the 2014 Kassel Book Dummy Award, which toured photography festivals internationally. In February 2020 he launched his first solo exhibition ‘Everybody Knows Dead People’ at The Space Between. In 2009 his band Dark Room Notes was nominated for the Choice Music Prize for Best Irish Album. Between 2006 – 2008 he ran photography programmes at an after-school project of the Family Resource Centre (FRC) in St. Michael’s Estate that was exhibited in the Irish Museum of Modern Art and St Michaels Flats for Common Ground, an arts organisation working with artists and communities. His short film Andy’s Promise featured at the 2007 Darklight film festival at the Irish Film Centre. Shanahan is the Exhibition Installation and Lighting Manager at Photo Museum Ireland, where he also curates the education programme.

Course Cancellation Policy

• Full refunds will be given for courses cancelled in excess of 10 working days before course start date.*

• Cancellations made 10 working days or less in advance will incur the full course fee.*

• No refund will be made to students who fail to attend classes or who do not complete the course.

Course Transfers/Change of Date

Individuals may substitute participants prior to the start of the course without additional payment. Course transfer or change of date requires notification by phone (+35316714654) or e-mail (info@photomuseumireland.ie) received by Photo Museum Ireland more than 6 working days prior to the course commencement date.

Disclaimer: Photo Museum Ireland reserves the right to cancel or re-schedule any course at any time. In the unlikely event of cancellation, fees will be refunded. Photo Museum Ireland also reserves the right to re-schedule the start dates of all courses and, if necessary, to vary the content. Except where expressly stated, all fees are non-refundable. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information on the web-site, it may be subject to later alteration or amendment in the light of policy changes, course updates or other constraints.