EVA International: Platform Commissions

The Dock proudly presents the Platform Commissions by Sarah Durcan, Phillip McCrilly, Sharon Phelan, Frank Sweeney, Cliodhna Timoney and Amna Walayat. The Platform Commissions are an initiative by EVA International – Ireland’s biennial of contemporary art – to support the production of significant new works by artists based in Ireland. Responding to the theme of Citizenship, the artists for the 40th EVA International were selected by Palestinian artist Emily Jacir and Irish curator and art historian Pádraic E. Moore.

The Invisibles by Sarah Durcan focuses on Ella Young, a revolutionary Irish activist and mystic who emigrated to California in 1925, forging her own spiritual citizenship. Young was a poet and writer, involved with Cumann na mBan, who was also a Theosophist and pagan believer in the power of trees, mountains, and an otherworld of supernatural forces. Young’s trajectory from a radical nationalist to a self-proclaimed druidess in a liberated West Coast artistic scene provides a counter narrative to the conservative and misogynistic Irish Free State that emerged after 1922.

wet HEAT sweats without scent by Phillip McCrilly began as an extended research project, aiming to historically renegotiate the queer body within a contemporary revision of conflict in the North, but over time became a more reflective and cathartic attempt by the artist in coming to terms with his own troubles-related trauma from his childhood. Taking the shape of a scripted one-on-one massage treatment (made in collaboration with and performed by Janie Doherty), the work maps a history of intimacy and vulnerability against the backdrop of sectarian conflict, whilst speculating on potential forms of promiscuous care in the aftermath of The Troubles.

Citizens United: A Speech Act by Sharon Phelan proposes a sonic fiction that reads across artificial entities, synthetic voices and communicative capitalism. By exploring ways in which speech has become distinct from the individual, and language, listening and being-together has been co-opted for capitalist modes of production, the work draws on research into the politics of citizenship and its contingent, (sonic) traces.

Few Can See by Frank Sweeney examines the legacy of broadcast censorship of the conflict in the north of Ireland and political movements during this era. The project attempts to recreate material absent from state archives due to censorship, based on contemporary oral history interviews with people censored during this time period. Within a late 80s current affairs television format, actors verbatim re-enact edited transcripts from 18 oral history interviews, later dubbing their own performances. This technique is inspired by the use of actors to dub the voices of censored people during the conflict.

Cliodhna Timoney's Platform Commission explored the notion of the dancefloor as a stage for shelter, resistance and escapism, while reflecting on both historical and culturally significant dancefloors of Ireland as spaces of collective imagining. The work focuses primarily on rural and regional contexts, and examine people’s determination to journey in search of kinship. It aims to unearth our relationship to dance, desire, collective memory and how it contests, connects or interrelates across generations. In researching the work, the artist visited archives and places of interest such as The Rainbow Ballroom of Romance in Glenfarne, County Leitrim.

Amna Walayat presents A Flight of Two Half Birds, performative self-portraits through Indo-Persian miniature techniques, which are combined with questions of identity, estrangement, and loss. The series explores mourning and the sense of self and home, reflecting on the human experience of displacement. The artist expresses the duality of cultural experiences of ‘home’ and ‘new home’. She aims to consider a search for Utopia through a process of self-exploration and reflects on the challenges that she face in an in-between space.

About EVA International
EVA International is Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art. EVA leads in the commissioning and curating of contemporary art by Irish and international artists, culminating in a programme of artistic encounters, exhibitions, and education projects, that takes place every two years across venues in Limerick city and beyond. EVA was founded by artists in 1977 and it remains one of the longest running visual arts organisations in Ireland, with a history of working with some of the world’s most influential curators.