A public reading room presented at The Tea Houses Kilkenny in March 2026, curated by Rachel Botha in partnership with Butler Gallery as part of the public programme for I Took A Hammer in My Hand.

Reading Room: I Took a Hammer in My Hand explored some of the central themes of the artist's research and the exhibition in a different context and offered further opportunity for reflection and community engagement. It included a curated selection of books from Jan McCullough’s collection, including I Took a Hammer in My Hand: The Women’s Build-It and Fix-It Handbook (1973) that lent the exhibition at the Butler Gallery its title. Presented alongside these books were manuals, artist books, zines, local publications, and two films, exploring DIY culture, labour, class, gender, and shared practices of making and repair, curated collaboratively by the artist, curator Rachel Botha, and invited guests. An onsite photocopier allowed visitors to make copies of any reference material of interest.

Reading Room: I Took a Hammer in My Hand drew from research and oral histories collected during McCullough’s research residency at Butler Gallery in 2025, which informed the development of the works in the exhibition.

The reading room foregrounded the work of local woodworkers including Sean Murphy, a furniture maker who began his apprenticeship at the furniture factory and workshop Callaghan & Connolly, once located just metres from the Tea Houses. As a young apprentice, his first task was collecting daily tea break orders from its many workers, who sat around a large communal table at the heart of the workshop. That table, which provided a space for work, rest and informal learning, was reimagined by contemporary furniture makers Sarah McCloy and Louise Anson as a bespoke, handcrafted object especially for the Reading Room: I Took a Hammer in My Hand. It influenced the development of the project and became the central gathering point for all materials and engagement in the reading room, its creation a gesture to the unseen legacies of collective industry, skill and materiality that preceded it.

Thanks to the generous support of Arts Council Ireland Project Award.

Design by Alex Synge at The First 47

Documentation by Ros Kavanagh