Longford artist exhibits at 60th Venice Art Biennale

This week one of Longford's most important contemporary artists, Eimear Walshe, presented their work at the 60th Venice Art Biennale, 2024.
Eimear, in conjunction with curator Sara Greavu and The Project Arts Centre, is tasked with “increasing awareness of Ireland’s strong visual arts sector” by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports and Media.

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.
Entitled “Romantic Ireland” Eimear's work comprises a multi-channel video installation and an operatic soundtrack housed in an earth-built sculpture.
The video stages soapy, melodramatic encounters between character archetypes from the 19th to 21st centuries. These figures occupy an abstracted ruin, a site under simultaneous construction and demolition.

The Irish Museum of Modern Art describes Eimear 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.

Eimear told the Leader how her involvement came about, “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”.
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.”
Sara describes a politically and socially charged theme, encompassing ideas and ideals that are both polarising and connecting.

Eimear's work comprises a multi-channel video installation and an operatic soundtrack housed in an earth-built sculpture

The art is 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”.
Eimear's previous work “The Land Question: Where the fuck am I supposed to have sex?” is a reference for her Ben presentation. That was an artist talk in video format. It presents a brief history of land contestation in Ireland, and questions how the history of land relations persistently impacts our most intimate thoughts, aspirations, and interactions.

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 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 began on April 20, 2024 and ends on November 24, 2024.