Project's Curator of Visual Art, Sara Greavu, speaks about the Dublin-based arts centre's current exhibition, artist Eva Richardson McCrea’s The Decameron / Na Deich Lá - watch an extract above.
Taking inspiration from Giovanni Boccaccio's 14th century book of short stories, relocating to a contemporary 'co-living' development, The Decameron / Na Deich Lá explores the housing crisis in Ireland, while asking 'important questions about how we can live with one another'.
Since 2022, in my role as curator in Project Arts Centre, I have been programming one project per year that addresses or considers one of the one of the most critical issues conditioning the lives of artists and others in Ireland, today – housing.
In the first year, this was configured as an open research project, with screenings, talks, reading groups, and more. We subsequently worked with artists Avril Corroon and then Eimear Walshe, in the Venice Biennale, on solo projects that spoke to this issue, trying to find routes into the questions that surround housing from a wide range of perspectives.
Some of the works shown address the issue head-on and some are more lateral or sidelong in their view.
Eva Richardson McCrea's work was included in an early screening series in the programme, organised with aemi and we were thrilled to be able to go on to work with Eva on this major new project, enabled by the Arts Council’s Project Award.
The Decameron / Na Deich Lá doesn’t take a polemical tone – it doesn’t even speak about housing directly – and yet it speaks to many of the issues that prompted this series: the conditions in which people are living, the meaning of 'home’, utopian/dystopian ideas underpinning planning and development, the financialisation and commodification of housing, and the erasure of the concept of the future.
What has emerged is a film that was made over two years through an incredibly rigorous scripting and production process. The Decameron / Na Deich Lá asks important questions about how we can live with one another, and it does so by mobilising humour and awkwardness, empathy and tenderness.
The Decameron / Na Deich Lá is at Project Arts Centre, Dublin, until April 5th 2025 - find out more here.
