Staying with the Trouble
IMMA | Irish Museum of Modern Art
Major Group Show 2025
Exhibition Design
The exhibition design illustrates Haraway’s idea of “tentacular thinking” as a spatial graphic system. Haraway proposes tentacular thinking as a non-linear way of thinking about our relationship with the natural world that reflects natural patterns (in trees, plants, mycelium, root systems, tentacles), follows several paths of inquiry and allows for entanglement and connections.
At the heart of the design is a modular series of A2 posters. Arched paths printed in metallic bronze ink connect with the path on the next poster and the next, so that when installed together, a maze forms. Printed on thin paper and wallpaper-pasted directly onto the gallery surfaces, the lines cross doorways, corners, and architectural thresholds. The paths line up, split, and branch out, creating new routes across the walls and turning the installation process into a game, (reminiscent of Ken Garland’s Connect) of responding to the architecture and creating the most alluring paths through it.
Each poster is linked to one of the exhibition’s five themes, or “tentacles”: Making Kin, CompostingSowing WorldsCritters, and Techno-Apocalypse. These tentacles act as wayfinding points, offering visitors clear introductions into different sections of the exhibition. The system brings clarity without setting a fixed route, encouraging visitors to move through the exhibition intuitively and make their own connections.
While visually bold, the approach is light in its material use, relying on adaptable, wall-based graphics rather than heavy interventions. In this way, the exhibition design reflects the exhibition itself, embodying tentacular thinking in form and its making.
Earth Rising 2025
IMMA | Irish Museum of Modern Art
Festival | Visual Identity
The visual identity for Earth Rising 2025 builds on a graphic system originally developed for IMMA’s major group exhibition of 2025 (Staying with the Trouble). The exhibition identity was based on the idea of “tentacular thinking” that was visualised as a modular maze system to illustrate connection, interdependence and entanglement between the artists work as well as in our eco systems. While carrying forward its core design elements, into the festival setting it is reworked and adapted to a broader public audience, with new colours, formats, and applications that suit the energy and scale of the festival.
The Earth Rising logotype was redesigned and animated. The two words are treated as a reflection of one another and animated as if emerging and descending into water. This mirrored form reflects both the ecological threat of rising sea levels as well as the hopeful message of the Earth (up)Rising through collective action.
The identity was applied to a range of digital and print outputs, including a foldable poster–programme with an integrated map, a riso-printed poster distributed across community noticeboards, outdoor advertising, and a substantial digital campaign with animated stings and event-specific templates. The identity also extended into the physical festival environment through event backdrops, podiums, lanyards, wayfinding, and signage.