Michael Hill is Programme Curator at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin, Ireland, and one half of the curatorial team (with Clíodhna Shaffrey) that represented Ireland at the 59th Venice Biennale 2022, and Irish Tour 2023, with artist Niamh O’Malley.
His exhibition programming increasingly foregrounds practices by artists living in diaspora, and those working with subjects relating to migration, including land, displacement, conflict, grief, storytelling, and dreaming.
In his practice-led curatorial work, he collaborates closely with artists to produce site- and contextually-responsive exhibitions, whether they are in a gallery setting or outside of formal situations. In 2024 he curated two major off-site solo exhibitions in the active industrial setting of Dublin Port, integrating large-scale immersive installations into a disused pump house building (Yuri Pattison) and open air graving docks (Liliane Puthod).
He has worked with several Irish and International artists on their first solo exhibitions in Ireland (Lisa Freeman, Fanny Gicquel, Tai Shani, Tamsin Snow), and curated solo gallery exhibitions by artists who have represented their countries at the Venice Biennale, and exhibited at other major global art events (Sean Edwards (Wales 2019), Sean Lynch (Ireland 2015), Pilvi Takala (Finland 2022), Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca (Brazil 2019)).
He was previously Curator and Assistant Curator at The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, producing a series of exploratory site-responsive artist projects by Áine Mac Giolla Bhríde, Andy Fitz, Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty. He has worked in public, private and artist-run contemporary art galleries in Ireland and UK since 2008.
He has an active mentoring and support practice that includes Freelands Artist Programme, Belfast; Jerwood Cultural Accelerator, London; Chronic Connections, Fire Station Artists’ Studios, Dublin. He also maintains an occasional independent publishing and graphic design project, 100 Years Ago Today, that includes books, postcards and music releases. He is a member of the Arts Council of Ireland’s Peer Panel, a Member of IKT International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art, and a Board Member of Askeaton Contemporary Arts.