Phase 1
September 18–November 15, 2020
EVA International is delighted to announce the Phase 1 programme of the 39th International, featuring 12 venue-based and offsite presentations by Irish and international artists and collaborating curators, across venues in Limerick and online. Taking its reference from the "Golden Vein," a 19th-century descriptor for the agricultural bounty of the Limerick region, the 39th EVA International programme seeks to address ideas of land and its contested values in the context of Ireland today; extending to questions of how we relate to the land in terms of ideology, identity, and resource.
Guest Programme / Little did they know
Phase 1 of the Guest Programme, curated by Merve Elveren and titled Little did they know, features Melanie Jackson and Esther Leslie’s collaborative project The Inextinguishable (2020), which explores the politicization of milk as a primal liquid of life. The project, which will accompany all three phases of the biennial programme, comprises a series of interrelated narratives about milk, extending from its relation to care through to its use in biotechnology. Michele Horrigan’s research project, Stigma Damages (2011–ongoing), focuses on another substance, namely bauxite—aluminium’s primary constituent. Through an investigation into the Aughinish Alumina Refinery in Co. Limerick and its ecological impact, Horrigan carefully unfolds how historical imaginaries of aluminium have intersected with other structures of value, gender, power, and ecology. Driant Zeneli’s video installations from the trilogy Beneath a surface there is just another surface (2015–2019) confront Albania’s landmark metallurgical projects under the leadership of Enver Hoxha; the abandoned sites of industry becoming stage-sets for magical-realist space travel. The installations of Yane Calovski and Eirene Efstathiou centre on the intertwining of personal and social narratives. Calovski’s installation Personal Object (2017–ongoing) is a dialogue among family heirlooms, the artist’s recent and previous works, as well as Oskar Hansen’s and Paul Thek’s social and collaborative teachings. Eirene Efstathiou’s installation of works interrupt the palimpsestic historical consciousness of Exarcheia in Athens, challenging its image through collective recollections from the district that date back to the 1970s.
Little did they know also highlights Women Artists Action Group (WAAG), through Pauline Cummins’ personal archive. WAAG’s ambitious 1987 Slide Exhibition, which featured 91 women artists working in Ireland, is revisited for the first time in a public display. The online project It’s not for you we did it also concerns modes of self-representation and collective organisation. Developed by curator Sara Greavu in collaboration with artist Ciara Phillips and presented on the Guest Programme’s dedicated website, a series of online dossiers offers new narratives of the social and cultural activism that was taking place in Derry from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. It’s not for you we did it also provides context for the work of the Derry Film and Video Workshop, whose work will feature in Phase 3 of the 39th EVA International programme in 2021.
Platform Commissions / Partnership Projects
Other presentations for Phase 1 of the 39th EVA International include new commissions as part of EVA’s Platform Commissions initiative, selected by Anne Tallentire, Merve Elveren and Matt Packer. Áine McBride’s sculptural works add an ambivalent functionality to the 19th architecture of The Sailor’s Home—a building designed to house international sailors, while Emily McFarland’s Curraghinalt (the first of three videos that will be presented across the three phases of the 39th EVA International programme) draws out the political and environmental registers of change in the landscape of West Tyrone in the North of Ireland. Eimear Walshe’s works The Land Question: Where the fuck am i supposed to have sex? and How much no thanks, provide introductions to the artist's ongoing concern for relations between housing, sexuality, and sex in contemporary Ireland. Laura Fitzgerald’s Fantasy Farming presents an installation that develops from the artist’s ongoing exploration into the tensions that exist between rural Irish life and cultural internationalism, featuring two large-scale ‘hay shed’ audio-enclosures and a series of drawings that depict micro-dramas of provincial insecurity. EVA will also present the first commission under its Partnership Project initiative, developed through EVA’s participation in the Magic Carpets network; Bora Baboci’s site specific audio installation, Predictions, offering a fantasy fictional forecast of Limerick’s Shannon River.
Alongside the exhibition programme will be a number of events and public programme activities, including a collaboration with students at Limerick School of Art and Design (Park Life: Ecologies of the People’s Park) and Dhá Theanga, a commission of audio tours for minority language communities developed by local participants.
Launch
Marking the launch of the 39th EVA International will be the release of an exclusive video of spoken word performance by MuRli, God Knows and Hazey Haze. The video will be broadcast on EVA’s Facebook page at 7pm on Friday 18th September as part of Limerick’s Culture Night.
Venues and Visitor Information
39th EVA International (Phase 1) venues are Limerick City Gallery of Art, The Hunt Museum, The Sailor’s Home, Enable Ireland, EVA Offices and Archive, and outdoor locations. All indoor venues are subject to capacity restrictions and public health protocols. Please see for eva.ie for further information.
For international visitors intending to travel to Ireland, please refer to the latest government advice here.
Press
For press information, images or interview requests please contact: Emma Pettit at Margaret on T +44 (0) 20 7739 8203 or email emma [at] margaretlondon.com. The full list of participating artists across all three phases of the 39th EVA International programme was released in July 2020 and is available to view here. Phase 2 and 3 programmes of the 39th EVA International will be released in early 2021.
