running:
2 July - 25 July, appointment only
(closed 11,12 and 13 july)
public open day:
Fri 25 July
Showpony
Emma Quin in residence
Emma Quin
Ends 25 April 2025
About the residency
Inspecting the toy animal as a cultural and political object, ‘Showpony’ considers humanity’s disconnection with animals and other life forms. Through the growth of industrialisation, urbanisation and advancing techno-capitalism, humanity asserts dominance over the modern landscape, compartmentalising animals in line with our convenience.
In his 1980 essay ‘Why Look At Animals?’, John Berger notes how animals, once regarded as sacred, spiritual beings, are now reduced to a tamed commodity, domesticated into the home and intensively farmed onto the plate. Focusing on childhood experience where these understandings are first formed, this work considers how toys and children’s mass media falsely centre humans in the natural world.
About the artist
Emma Quin (she/her)
Emma works within an undisciplinary, expansive artistic and curatorial practice. As a former sociology graduate, her work assumes a top-down approach, exploring sociological and philosophical theories through conceptualisation, collaboration, material and object.
Emma has gravitated towards researching and contributing to artist-led spaces, projects and learning outside of traditional systems. As a Co-Director of the artist-led, voluntary-run space Catalyst Arts, Emma has co-curated a variety of projects as part of a non-hierarchal board. With support from the Jonathan Ruffer Curatorial Grant, Emma recently extended this interest to artist-led spaces in Glasgow.
Through Catalyst Arts, Emma and two other directors are part of an artistic exchange, Gluttt, with French artist-led space Glassbox funded by Fluxus Art Projects. To conclude her Catalyst Arts Co-Directorship, Emma will curate her first solo exhibition in October 2025, Non stick frying pan, working with artists Alex Keatinge and Niamh Hannaford, funded by Arts Council Northern Ireland. She was recently awarded the Backwater Artist Group Emerging Curator Award, 2026. Emma’s artistic work has been exhibited across Belfast in Flax Art Studios, Platform Arts, Arcade Studios, Belfast Photo Festival and Arts for All. She recently had a digital solo exhibition with Screen Service titled 'centralised planning'.