Julia Gelezova is a Cultural Producer and Curator, specialising in contemporary lens-based practices. She is General and Project Manager for PhotoIreland, producing events throughout the year like the annual PhotoIreland Festival and Critical Academy, while collaborating on ambitious projects like Creative Europe Photography Platforms—Parallel and Futures. Julia is co-editor of OVER Journal: The Critical Journal of Photography and Visual Culture for the 21st Century. In 2024, she has founded vicinities.network - a peer network for Visual Arts curators and professionals based in Ireland.
 

She has ample experience in producing exhibitions and events, including curatorial work and project management, has vast and successful experience in personal and collective application writing for bodies like the Arts Council of Ireland and local councils. She has participated in portfolio reviews, acted as visiting lecturer, and also worked in an editorial capacity and translation for artists and other arts professionals, including work for The Routledge Guide to Photography and Visual Culture. Most recently, she curated the 2021 edition of PhotoIreland Festival and was the Centre Culturel Irlandais cultural producer resident 2022. She is a member of the AICA International Association of Art Critics.

 

Personal Practice

 

Julia is currently engaged in a long-term, practice-based research project, Terms of Consumption, which reviews and revises Irish cultural identity through contemporary visual arts practices that in turn engage in conversations around food histories and culture. The project is realised through curatorship, commissions, cooking, image-making and collecting, and an experimental communion of all of the above, with annual public output. Though the outcome focuses on Ireland, the research and context is global. This research has been funded by the Arts Council of Ireland’s Visual Arts Bursary. The Collectors series commissions have been funded by the Arts Council of Ireland's Visual Arts Project Award and is ongoing.

Portrait by Aisling McCoy