As part of our Through the Lens lecture series, his talk reflects upon the complexity of our lived experiences, exploring themes of belonging, care, memory, and the ways we create meaning in our lives. It considers both the comfort of feeling at home – in our bodies and communities – and the challenges of displacement, marginalisation and invisibility.

The ways we connect to place and identity are shaped not only by personal experiences but also by broader social and cultural forces. In the North, women continue to navigate systemic barriers, from the policing of their bodies to the silencing of violence against them. These realities shape the experience of being female in this place, yet women’s voices and perspectives have often been overlooked.

Photography on this island has historically been shaped by male voices, despite women creating quietly powerful, groundbreaking work. This lecture challenges those omissions by foregrounding the work of female photographers whose perspectives offer a valuable and necessary counterpoint.

Speaker Biography:
Dr Clare Gallagher is a Northern Irish artist, writer and curator, and is senior lecturer in photography in the Belfast School of Art at Ulster University. Her research and practice challenge the marginalisation of home and women’s experiences by interrogating the ways in which domestic practices reflect broader cultural beliefs and economic systems. Clare’s previous projects include The Second Shift (2019) about the invisible work of home and childcare primarily carried out by women on top of their paid employment. The series was exhibited at Photo Museum Ireland and the Finnish Museum of Photography, and published as a photobook. Her current project Touch/Hunger explores the attachments, tensions and care in relationships of home. She curated A Bigger Picture at the Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast in 2022, of Northern Ireland’s feminist and queer photography, and Curating Activism on Belfast’s socially-engaged art practices for Frederick Douglass Week in 2024. Her new book, Subversive Mothers, Disturbing Domesticity, will be published by Bloomsbury in 2025.