TUNDE TOTH

Tunde Toth is an artist and researcher living and working in Ireland since 1998.

Her practice includes the development and delivery of participatory, inclusive art projects, engaging audiences and participants from diverse backgrounds in various contexts. She has been working collaboratively with communities of place or interest, schools, artists, community groups, children, young people and adults as well as inter-generational groups and people living with disabilities and additional support needs.

She has extensive experience in areas of arts in education in Ireland both in formal and informal settings. She has developed and delivered exhibition/gallery based responsive engagement programmes at the Municipial Gallery of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council Arts Office (at Lexicon) and at Butler Gallery among other organizations. She has been working as a Creative Associate appointed by the Arts Council of Ireland on the Creative Schools Programme (Creative Ireland) since it’s initiation in 2018.

Through the research and development of socially engaged art projects Tunde explores different forms of participation: she is interested in collaborative working processes where participants shape, identify and `re-imagine` both process and outcomes – they are in a dialogue with their project. While making art, they also become active contributors to the documentation of their process and take agency and ownership of their work. Tunde explores the possible forms of co-authorship, co-ownership for each work and investigates the relevant ethical questions. Ethical issues related to documentation, evaluation, participants` consent, archives and the “after-life” of these archives were central to her research in her MA studies in Limerick (LIT LSAD, MA SPACE: Master of Art and Design in Social Arts Practice and Creative Environment 2018).

An example for a long term project exploring issues of social exclusion and communication barriers with adults with intellectual disabilities: www.deenviewproject.com

Tunde expanded her artistic research methods and processes during her Advanced Masters studies: Master of  Research in Social and Political Contexts (Sint Lucas University College, KdG, Antwerp, Belgium, 2020): her currently ongoing research is an exploration of Commoning Methodologies Developed by Artists in Dialogical Social Arts Practices. www.tundetoth.com/artistic-research/

Tunde initiated whY Commons in 2020 in Ireland: a small collective of artists, activists and researchers sharing knowledge, experiences and experiments in eco-social arts practice, climate activism and modes of collective action. https://tundetoth.com/artistic-research/artistic-research-y-commons/

Previous studies include MA Literature (1998 at Pecs University, Hungary).

(previous) studio based practice:

Tunde’s studio based art (making) practice gradually shifted towards a socially engaged, conversational and collaborative practice that is more inclusive and involves working with participants from non-art backgrounds. The studio as a space went through a transformation and became a not-always-a-physical space for experiments, thinking, reflection, writing and research.

TAGS: #Tunde Toth, #Socially Engaged Arts Practice, #Dialogical arts practice, #participatory research, #artistic research, #relational practice, #Arts in education, #Participatory art, #social exclusion, #social inclusion, #creative commons, #culture commons, #commoning, #climate crisis, #environmental emergency