New Irish Works: Home Instruction Manual
Jan McCullough

Traditionally, instruction manuals have been the perfect source for practical solutions. Experts in specific subjects provide written authority on how to repair faults and carry out tasks from scratch.

McCullough typed ‘how to make a home’ into Google, and was directed to an online chat forum in which self-described experts were exchanging detailed instructions. She rented an ordinary suburban house and carried out the strangers’ advice exactly over the period of two months. In complying with the instructions for making the perfect home, she contemplated the construction of an identity from scratch. The photographs document the end result of her time living and working in the house, trying on different lives for size.

Jan McCullough works with photography, moving image, sculpture and installation. Her work explores how the photographic image can be used to construct and produce new individual and collective expressions of self.

She was recently Artist in Residence at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin and at Lightwork in Syracuse, New York (2020-2021) and participated in the Freelands Artist Programme at PS² (2018-2020).  Her work has been nominated for Pla(t)form at Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2018); The Deutsche Borse Photography Prize (2016); The International Centre for Photography New York Infinity Award (2016); and won the British Journal of Photography Breakthrough Award (2016). Her book ‘Home Instruction Manual’, published by Verlag Kettler, was awarded the Kassel Fotobookfestival Dummy Award and shortlisted for the Recontres D’Arles Author Book Award (2016). ¹

About The Series
Selected by an international panel of 23 professionals, New Irish Works brings you a selection of 20 projects and 20 photographers representing the diverse range of practices coming from Ireland. New Irish Works 2016 is a year long project of 10 presentations and 20 publications that aims to highlight the great moment Irish Photography is experiencing.

About the Publisher 
Founded in 2009, PhotoIreland was conceived as an organisation that would stimulate a dialogue around Photography in Ireland by developing a varied array of initiatives and events with a strong participative approach.