Image: Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin
Temple Bar Gallery + Studios will host two visual arts performances as part of Dublin Fringe Festival from 5 to 20 September 2026. The Dublin venue said the festival brings contemporary, playful and provocative new work by Irish and international artists to sites across the city, and that two of its own studio artists are featured in this year’s programme.
The first presentation is Rachel Enright Murphy’s 'No Obligation', which runs from 9 to 13 September 2026. Described as a live artwork, it combines legal language with intimate action. The work was developed with an intimacy coordinator and a legal-creative consultant, and includes an acting contract read aloud while two actors perform within their contractual obligations. The project is framed as a series of intimate performance exercises in which improvised movement is constrained by legal or ethical requirements.
Temple Bar Gallery + Studios identifies Murphy as a Dublin-based artist working with text-based artworks across video, sound, performance and printed material. Her practice uses semantic and phonetic experiments that operate as misreadings of legal agreements, documented events and scientific papers. The venue notes that she often collaborates through theatrical scripting and production practices to explore autonomy, spectatorship and sexual subjectivity. Murphy is also a Residential Awardee of Firestation artist Studios for 2026/27 and the recipient of Temple Bar Gallery + Studios’ Recent Graduate Residency Award for 2025/26.
Credits for 'No Obligation' list performers Cian Malin and Molly Murphy Hazzard, sound design by Dan Montague O’Brien, costume by Lucy Folan Kennedy, intimacy direction by Sinead Cassidy Holt, creative-legal consulting by Julie Morrissy, artist mentorship by Bea McMahon and production by Sinéad Gallagher. The development of the work was supported by The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon and Temple Bar Gallery + Studios.
The second performance is Ella de Búrca’s 'Hard Mouth Show & Tell', scheduled for 16 to 20 September 2026. Presented alongside collaborators Hugh Hick and Elaine McCague, the work is described as a darkly comic gallery tour that blends visual art and aerial performance to explore navigating the Irish healthcare system with endometriosis. The project is rooted in lived experience and said to address authority, misdiagnosis and silence, with bodies speaking where meaning slips and truth is repeatedly rewritten.
De Búrca’s practice combines performance, sculpture and painting, and often results in temporary immersive installation. Temple Bar Gallery + Studios says her work reflects on meaning-making and female histories, while also looking at how viewers perform their role and how this intersects with the male gaze. Her research, according to the venue, layers and recontextualises art-historical moments through her own experience.
Temple Bar Gallery + Studios said the development of both 'Hard Mouth Show & Tell' and 'No Obligation' was supported by The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon and the organisation itself. Tickets for both performances are available through Dublin Fringe Festival, with 'No Obligation' running 9–13 September and 'Hard Mouth Show & Tell' running 16–20 September 2026.
