Longford artist to fly Irish flag in Venice

Last week was quite a week for Longford artist Eimear Walshe. The Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports and Media announced the selection of Eimear, in conjunction with Sara Greavu and Project Arts Centre as the curator, to represent Ireland at the 60th Venice Art Biennale in 2024.

The Venice Biennale is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of its kind. It's a big deal.

Eimear is also a big deal. The Irish Museum of Modern Art describes them as “an artist, writer, and educator that uses academic study in Queer Theory and Feminist Epistemology in the production of sculpture, publishing, performances, and lectures”.

The Venice Biennale (Ben) is one of the most important international platforms for the visual arts, attracting over half a million visitors, including global curators, gallerists, art critics, and artists.

The selection of the team to represent Ireland was made following an open, competitive process, with international jury members. Ireland at Venice is an initiative of Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council.“I'm really delighted,” Eimear told the Leader on Monday, “I was approached by Sara Greavu, from the Project Arts Centre. We made the bid as a team, as a curator and an artist. We came up with an idea for a pavilion for the Irish exhibition at Ben.”

Eimear's pavilion for Venice 2024 “will offer a new cultural synthesis that links our contemporary moment to the past, particularly to gendered and sexual legacies related to the history of land and housing”.

It's a politically and socially charged theme, encompassing ideas and ideals that are both polarising and connecting. Art should be used as a tool for political commentary and highlighting zeitgeist issues that affect the artist and their peers. The topline description references “a nation in escalating crisis”.

“The work emerges from the context that I'm working in. Artists, and I suppose everyone, are really affected by the economic and political situation in Ireland. It would be remiss of me not to account for that in the work I'm putting forward,” Eimear explained, “If you ask any visual artists in Ireland what affects them the most right now it's probably their dwelling situation, and how tough it is.”

Eimear says the issue is as relevant to Longford as Dublin: “The pressure in Dublin is unbelievable of course, but in my experience it's spread to every corner of the country, both for renters and for people looking to buy. There's no place unaffected.”

Since 2005 Ireland's national representation at the Venice Biennale has been a Government initiative led by Culture Ireland in partnership with The Arts Council. Both consider the Venice Biennale to be an opportunity for artists' development and for Irish curators to work in an international context. Following the presentation the Ireland at Venice exhibition will return for a National Irish Tour.

“What's really exciting about that is that following this big moment in Venice, this big pavilion show with other nations presenting at the same time, it will return on a tour of Ireland,” the artist tells, “I don't think the venues are announced yet, but there will be a Midlands venue and I'm really excited to see the work operates on a tour of Ireland. My aim is to make something that's just as relevant locally as it is across all the corners of Ireland.”

Eimear's wish is to honour the silent heroes: “With Sara Greavu as curator, we aim to make a pavilion in tribute to those who persist, against the odds, in being a shelter for each other.”

Curator Sara Greavu said: “The Venice Biennale offers an incredible opportunity to connect the ideas, practices and urgencies of contemporary art in Ireland to those of artists, thinkers and publics internationally.

“Eimear Walshe’s extraordinary work speaks of and from a precarious generation, and proposes new ways to claim a sense of kinship, place and love; refusing estrangement from history and community, language and tradition. We are so thrilled to work with them for Ireland's representation in Venice,” the curator said.

Ireland was previously represented at the Venice Biennale by Niamh O’Malley (2022), Eva Rothschild (2019), Jesse Jones (2017), Sean Lynch (2015), Richard Mosse (2013).

Eimear's work in video, sculpture, publishing and performance will trace the legacies of late 19th century land contestation in Ireland and its relation to private property, sexual conservatism, and the built environment.

They have recently exhibited with Van Abbemuseum, EVA International, the National Sculpture Factory, and Temple Bar Gallery and Studios. Their work is in the collections of the Arts Council and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. They travel widely across the island screening, reading, producing, and performing their work.

Ben 2024 begins on April 20, 2024.