Dignified Kings Play Chess On Fine Green Silk
Karl Grimes

Texts by Martin Kemp, David Norris, Stephanie McBride, Nigel Monaghan and Karl Grimes. Published on the occasion of the exhibitions at the National Museum of Ireland and Gallery of Photography, Dublin.

Born in Dublin, Ireland. Studied at University College Dublin, graduating with a B.Soc.Sc and an M.A in Urban Planning. He later studied Photography and Media at New York University and the International Center Of Photography, New York, graduating with an M.F.A. His work is exhibited and published in the United States and Europe and is represented in a number of leading international public and private collections.
His practice is primarily concerned with the politics and hidden narratives implicit in science, medical, religious and natural history archives, museums and shrines. To this end, his projects address the binaries pertaining to nature/culture, living/dead, beautiful/grotesque, desire/disgust, subject/object and human/nonhuman.
His museum, archive and art/science projects include imaging, text, and video collaborations with the: American Museum of Natural History, New York; Mütter Museum & College of Physicians of Philadelphia; La Specola Museum, Florence, Italy; University of Florence Museum of Pathological Anatomy, Caregi Hospital, Florence, Italy; Hubrecht Laboratory, Netherlands; Tornblad Institute, Sweden; National Museum of Ireland (Natural History); Museum fur Naturkunde, Berlin; Science Gallery Dublin and the Comune di Napoli, Italy.

His solo exhibitions include: Photo Graphic Constructs, Travels in Amira, Grid Works, Still Life, R Block, Future Nature, Vial Memory, Stuffed Histories, Dignified Kings Play Chess On Fine Green Silk, Stigmatised and Per Grazia Ricevuta. He is currently completing a documentary and image archive project, Favours From Beyond, on the material culture of vernacular religious cult praxes in Naples, Italy.

The artist lives and works in West Cork, Ireland, and New York, NY

The National Museum of Ireland is home to the worlds greatest collection of objects
related to Irish history and heritage.