ROMANTIC IRELAND, an exhibition by artist Eimear Walshe, will receive its world premiere this April, in the Irish Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale.
Curated by Sara Greavu and Project Arts Centre, ROMANTIC IRELAND comprises a multi-channel video installation and an operatic soundtrack housed in an immersive sculpture.
Walshe's project explores the complex politics of collective building through the Irish tradition of the 'meitheal’: a gang of workers, neighbours, kith and kin who come together to build, harvest and cooperate in mutual aid.
It depicts a frenzied and fraught engagement with the ancient labour-intensive practice of earth building, a form of construction with an 11,000 year history and local iterations across the world.
Set on the site of an unfinished earth build, the video stages dramatic encounters between character archetypes from the 19th – 21st centuries.
"There are a lot of insights from Irish history that we oweit to the wider world to share," Walshe says of ROMANTIC IRELAND. "Life on the island — its history of colonisation, revolution, and partition —provides so many opportunities to re-enact historical traumas,so many invitations to betrayal of our past, our neighbours,and ourselves. We are a colonised nation, and yet we aid in thecolonisation of others. Some of us were dispossessed, and wenton to do the same ourselves. History doesn't split the difference.This is where the work for Venice emerges from."
The video was shot on location at the sustainable skills centre, Common Knowledge, based in Co. Clare.
The pavilion will be soundtracked by a five-voice opera describing the scene of an eviction, composed by Amanda Feery with a libretto by Walshe.
ROMANTIC IRELAND is representative of what curator Sara Greavu describes as: "a swelling Irish cultural revival increasingly visible across artforms that has received national and international interest. Walshe's work is not nostalgic or relying on imagined mythologies, and it is not nativist, but is opening out and reconfiguring, sensitively displacing and embracing these elements as it prefigures alternative social relationships."
(Pic: Faolan Carey)
Through a practice that spans video, sculpture, publishing, sound, and performance, Eimear Walshe's acclaimed work traces the legacies of late 19th century land contestation in Ireland, and its relation to private property, sexual conservatism, and the built environment.
For 120 years The Venice Biennale has been one of the most prestigious cultural events globally; it remains the most important international showcase for contemporary arts, with an annual attendance of over 500,000 visitors. Ireland was previously represented at the Biennale by artists Niamh O'Malley (2022), Eva Rothschild (2019), Jesse Jones (2017), Sean Lynch (2015) and Richard Mosse (2013).
Just launched! Ireland's representation at this year's prestigious @la_Biennale 📢
— Catherine Martin TD (@cathmartingreen) February 15, 2024
I wish artist Eimear Walshe, curator @saragreavu & @projectarts best of luck.
Their installation #RomanticIreland explores themes of
🟢private property
🟢sexual conservatism
🟢built environment pic.twitter.com/FPGbxcCgi1
ROMANTIC IRELAND will be on view at the Biennale Arte from 20 April to 24 November, 2024. After Venice, Walshe's exhibition will tour Ireland through 2025, returning to locations and communities across Ireland that have helped toinspire and foster the making of the work.
