About | Valeria Ceregini

Valeria Ceregini – Visual Arts Curator

Valeria Ceregini is an Italian art historian and visual arts curator based in Ireland. She has over10 years of curatorial experience and has collaborated with numerous international artists, curators and writers through exhibitions, exchanges, residencies, publications, talks and workshops.

Valeria graduated in Semiotics with an MA in Communication Science at the University of Turin and in Contemporary Art with an MA (Hons) in History of Art at the University of Genoa, later she pursued her studies attending the Postgraduate Diploma in Cultural Heritage & Museum Studies.

In December 2022, she curated the first group exhibition in a series of events to gather the local community around the arts. Reclaiming the Arts aimed to reconnect and recreate a sense of community, reclaim the spaces in Balbriggan to facilitate human connections around creativity and togetherness. In cooperation with Our Balbriggan and Fingal County Council are expected further vibrant activities and events to reconnect people with nature and reestablish local areas as shared spaces.

From January to November 2022, acting as Curator and Programming Coordinator at the Luan Gallery Valeria curated several exhibitions and social events such as The Soul of Matter by Derick Smith and Breaking Borders featuring artists Nicola Anthony, Trudi van der Elsen, Bernadette Hopkins, Benedict Hutchinson, Myra Jago, Vukašin Nedeljković and Beata Piekarska-Daly. Also, she framed the Luan Gallery’s Exhibition Programme 2023, which has been granted by the Arts Council of Ireland (€40k – Arts Grant Funding 2023).

In January 2022, she curated the installation project Towards Super-Connectionby Mark Cullen. With the support of the Culture Ireland, Irish Embassy and Musei di Genova the exhibition was staged at the Museum of Contemporary Art – Villa Croce, Genoa (IT). Acting as project manager, all people involved (artist and museum) were contracted by agreements, and she managed the exhibition budget (over €22k) and have kept to the commission deadline successfully been responsible for paying fees and all project admin.

She was the recipient of the Agility Award in 2022 and 2021 (€5k each), and the awardee curator of the GOMA residencies programme 2021 for her Breaking Borders researching project.

From September 2021 to March 2022 she organised the third episode of “Painting through its poetical emotions” staged at Galleria Weber&Weber, Turin. The three solo exhibitions featuring Irish artists, such as Colm MacAthlaoich, Gillian Lawler, and Trudi van der Elsen were supported by Culture Ireland and TAG – Torino Art Galleries. As the project manager, all people involved (artists and gallery) were contracted by agreements. Also, she managed the overall exhibition budget (over €20k) and have kept to the commission deadline successfully been responsible for paying artist fees.

In March 2020, she produced JournALL, a weekly online art programme interested in giving artists a voice and virtually presenting their work. She featured on the JournALL website, Instagram and YouTube channel the work of 19 artists to recall the number of Coronavirus.

From this project, a new collaboration with the UK multidisciplinary artist S A B O T A G E came out. She co-curated a new and exclusive performance developed through the voices of artists collected by JournALL throughout 2020. S A B O T A G E incorporated their concerns along with the news broadcasted during those times.

A second part titled The Aftermath – PhyloCode was streamed online as a visual response to the Covid-19 crisis, and the political, economic and social disruptions it has caused, and are fundamentally changing the traditional context for decision-making.

All these events were hosted by Pallas Projects/Studios on their social media, website and YouTube channel with a combined visitors averaging over 100k.

The VAI – Visual Artists Ireland invited her as a panellist in their webinar: Rethinking presentation – Adapting to a new landscape. This event in collaboration with Wicklow County Council Arts Office explored some of the new and different ways that artists and curators have presented work outside of traditional institutions as a result of the Covid-19 restrictions. Featuring: Ciara Finnegan, Valeria Ceregini and Jas Singh.

Acting as curator and project manager of the group show Over Nature, which toured six venues in Ireland and the UK between September 2019 and November 2020, she activated a new vision of greater ecological awareness and responsibility featuring six Irish and International artists, such as Shane Finan, Mary O’Connor, Kathy Herbert, Louis Haugh, Guillaume Combal and Beata Piekarska-Daly.

She was editor and promoter of the exhibition catalogue that was selected to be browsed at the Dublin Book Art Fair 2020 (Temple Bar Gallery+Studios) and purchased at The Library Project.

As the project manager, all people involved (artists and organisations) with her were contracted by an artist agreement. She also managed the exhibition budget (over €10k) and have kept to the commission deadline successfully been responsible for paying artist fees, furthermore, promoting the exhibition and the OPW – Office of Public Works acquired for their collection 8 pieces for an overall amount of €9k. Even on this occasion, it was respected the commission deadline paying all the people involved with the acquisition.

Valeria was invited to moderate the live event Culture Night 2020 as part of the Luan Gallery (Athlone, IE) online programme to give insight into Over Nature and its artists. To animate the debate around the arts she introduced non-visual artists to look at Nature through poetry, performance and music (respectively, Patrick Deeley, poet; Bernadette Hopkins, performer; and Helen Gaynor, musician, poet and painter).

Actively participated in Franko B’s Unloved workshop and exhibition (curated by a/political, 2019) at Rua Red, Dublin. At the latter, she took part in the realisation of Franko B’s Trauma [Audio Recording].

She was the artistic director and responsible for the artists-in-residence programme at Areacreativa42, Turin (2018-2019). In this position, she organised talks and residencies liaising with the local authorities and staff. She was the curator and manager of the group exhibition De Natura, editor of the exhibition catalogue and promoter of the show online with a social media strategy and advertising campaign.

Also a collaborating curator and writer-in-residence with Pallas Projects/Studios, Dublin (2017-2018) liaising with artists-in-studio and in the show.

In 2017, she was selected by SEA Foundation (Tilburg, NL) as curator-in-residence and, in 2018 she curated the group show Beyond the painting, the first episode of a travelling exhibition project on abstract painting entitled “Painting through its poetical emotions”. The second episode was staged at Galleria Weber&Weber, Turin (2018-2019) and all three solo exhibitions featuring Irish artists, such as Colm MacAthlaoich, Gillian Lawler, Denis Kelly were supported by Culture Ireland.

She was also the editor of the exhibition catalogue kindly supported by the Kildare County Council.

As the project manager, all people involved (artists and gallery) were contracted by agreements. Also, she managed the exhibition budget (over €6k) and have kept to the commission deadline successfully been responsible for paying artist fees.

Since 2019, Valeria is a regular juror member of the apexart (NYC) international panel.

Also, she has been appointed by VAI as one of the 30 best curators in Ireland and Northern Ireland to participate in the annual event Get Together 2018. She was reconfirmed as one of the top Irish curators at the Get Together 2019, 2021 and 2022.

Valeria Ceregini is supported by Arts Council of Ireland

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