Chicago is my kind of town

Artist talks and meets
With Gabriel Chalfin-Piney-González, Mark O’Gorman and Risa Puleo
Accompanied by artworks from Stuart Whipps and John Carson

Ireland House
401 North Michigan Avenue
Suite 1500
Chicago

Wednesday 8 April
12pm

Register here

Doors open at 11.20am, with light lunch served

Join at Ireland’s Consulate in downtown Chicago to meet participating artists and guests in our 2026 programme, discussing the key issues and themes in contemporary art and how it is made in Ireland and Chicago today.

The event foregrounds three key cultural voices and inspirations for Askeaton Contemporary Arts’ activities. 

Gabriel Chalfin-Piney-González is a multi-hyphenate artist and administrator with over 15 years of experience working with community art organizations, orchestrating multidisciplinary programs, and supporting artists in a career-changing capacity. They are the Exhibitions and Residency Manager at Hyde Park Art Center and founder of the Jewish Museum of Chicago.

Independent curator Risa Puleo makes exhibitions, such as Walls Turned Sideways: Artists Confront the Justice System at The Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston in 2018, about how artists intervene in social structures. Risa increasingly uses artistic and curatorial channels to implement changes in the material, infrastructural, and social fabric of a place. In collaboration with the 2023 Counterpublic Triennial in St. Louis and Native film collaborative, New Red Order, she supported the rematriation of a sacred site back to Osage Nation. She teaches at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 

Mark O’Gorman is the inaugural curator and producer of visual art at The Complex, a multi-disciplinary arts centre in Dublin’s north inner city, since 2018. He focuses on commissioning site-specific work with a prolonged developmental process and conversational approach with artists, who are carefully brought together in relation to one another. Mark has presented exhibitions and events at The Complex featuring artists including Jeremy Deller, Vivienne Dick, Aleana Egan, Jaki Irvine, Sean Lynch, and Locky Morris.

In addition, Stuart Whipps’ video Askeaton Hands will be screened, a 2025 portrait of the local Askeaton community and a representation of the hands that move, handle and shape the very existence of everyday life in Askeaton and its hinterland. 

John Carson’s American Medley (1981–86) is also represented, embodying a tour to fifty locations in the United States famed in popular music, from ‘What Made Milwaukee Famous to ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ and more in-between. Postcards and Polaroid photographs were initially sent back to Carson’s native Belfast, displayed during the conflict of The Troubles of Northern Ireland in the window at one of Carson’s favourite haunts, Delany’s ‘American-style’ diner. 

Image: Gabriel Chalfin-Piney-González, Risa Puleo and Mark O’Gorman