“Young man, the work of tearing apart: Strong men and women who stack up stones.”
Ireland in Venice presents romantic irelandan exhibition by Eimear Walsh for the 60th Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition, curated by Sarah Grieve and Project Arts Center.
Through practices spanning video, sculpture, publishing, sound and performance, Eimear Walsh’s work traces the legacy of late 19th century Irish land struggles and its relationship to private property, sexual conservatism and the built environment.
romantic ireland It consists of a multi-channel video installation and an operatic soundtrack set within an immersive sculpture. Set on an unfinished soil preparation site, the video depicts a soapy, dramatic encounter between the archetypes of his 21st century characters from the 19th century. These figures occupy an abstracted ruin that is undergoing simultaneous construction and demolition. The Pavilion soundtrack is her five-voice opera depicting the eviction scene, composed by Amanda Feely and libretto by Walsh.
Walsh’s project for Venice explores the complex politics of collective building in the Irish tradition. may heels: A group of workers, neighbors, brothers, and relatives who come together to build, harvest, and cooperate in mutual aid. The work depicts a frenetic and arduous engagement with the ancient, labor-intensive practice of earth building, an 11,000-year-old building form that has been practiced repeatedly around the world. The video piece was shot on location at Common Knowledge, a sustainable skills center on the west coast of Ireland. Led by choreographer Muftaw Yusuf, this artist and his group of seven performers play the characters of a historical duo constantly being torn apart. It was shot with four cell phones passed between each actor, blurring the traditional distinctions between director, cast, and cameraman.
Created in the shadow of Ireland’s ongoing housing crisis, this installation is a building site of potential, a wrestling ground for resolving Irish generational and class tensions, a space of tender care, and a place where state power It shows various appearances, including structures that have turned into cold ruins. The social death of eviction. This exhibition forces an encounter between historical moments and brings out records of their parallel power dynamics and emotions. their forms of labor, conflict, and pleasure; An intertwined history of sexuality, property, and nation.
“Ireland’s history has many insights that we have a duty to share with the wider world. Life on this island offers opportunities to relive historical trauma, including a history of colonization, revolution and partition. There are many invitations to betray our past, our neighbors, and ourselves. We are a colonized nation, yet we support the colonization of other nations. Some were stripped of their property and continued to do the same thing themselves. History makes no difference. This is where the work of Venice comes from.” — Eimear Walsh
“Walsh’s work is about the rising Irish cultural revival, but it is not nostalgic. It opens up and reconfigures elements, sensitively transposing and accepting them.” —Sarah Grieve, curator
Ireland at Venice is an initiative of Culture Ireland in partnership with Arts Council Ireland. With major sponsorship from Dublin City Council in Venice 2024, the Arts Council will support the national tour of Venice 2024. romantic ireland In 2025.
With support from the National Museum of Ireland, Longford County Council, Limerick School of Art and Design, Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT), UCD School of Art History, Embassy of Italy and Ireland and our Society, Patrons and Donors: Keith & Yvonne Brown, Peter Crowley, Anna Devlin and Paul Gannon, Gerrard and Monica Flood, Emma and Fred Goltz, Helen Kinsella, Adrian and Jennifer O’Carroll, Louise Church, Paul Duggan, Niall Ennis, Cathy – Gilfillan, Simone Janssens, Anne Kennedy, Lochlan Quinn, Dave Laythorne, Odette Rocha, Richard Whelan.