Kim McAleese

Kim McAleese is Director of the Edinburgh Art Festival. She completed a two-year directorship at Catalyst Arts, Belfast from 2009-11, curating various exhibitions and events at venues across Ireland. In 2012, with Eoin Dara, she opened Satis House, a gallery space in a domestic setting, where artists are encouraged to develop new work in response to this unique environment on a bi-monthly basis. Since opening, McAleese and Dara have curated seven exhibitions, as well as facilitated film screenings, performance workshops, artist talks, and public discussions. Alongside colleagues in the curatorial collective Household, they organized the first Household Contemporary Arts Festival in South Belfast, which saw over 30 domestic spaces open up to display work from over 80 artists over the course of one weekend in August 2012. They continue to operate within the Household collective and have also been working over the past twelve months on the development of the visual art program in the Outburst Queer Arts Festival. Dara currently works as the Assistant Curator at the MAC, Belfast, and McAleese is a recipient of the ACE award for curatorial practice from Arts Council Northern Ireland.