She was Head of Curatorial and Public Practice at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art from 2019 until 2023, where she curated solo exhibitions by Jala Wahid, Carolina Caycedo, Judy Chicago, Ad Minoliti and Abel Rodríguez. She was the co-curator of British Art Show 9 (2021–22), the biggest touring exhibition of contemporary art in the UK, organised every five years by Hayward Gallery Touring. Prior to Baltic, Irene worked as Head of Exhibitions at Nottingham Contemporary, where she curated exhibitions and commissioned projects by artists including Pia Camil, Steffani Jemison, Otobong Nkanga, Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz, Sun Ra, Danh Võ, Carol Rama and Asco. Recent group exhibitions include Stepping Softly on the Earth (2023), Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender Resistance (2018–9), States of America: Photography from the Civil Rights Movement to the Reagan Era (2017), and Rights of Nature: Art and Ecology in the Americas (2015). She was curator at the Frac Nord Pas de Calais, Dunkirk (2010–11), and was the recipient of the H+F Curatorial Grant (2010). Prior to that she co-directed the not-for-profit space Bétonsalon in Paris (2005–6). Irene was a jury for the Turner Prize in 2022 and participated in the British Council Commission Selection Committee for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2022. She is a board member of Videomuseum, a French consortium of museums and other public institutions managing modern and contemporary art collections.
Visit by art professionals from France, Germany and England