The minister for culture, heritage and the Gaeltacht, Josepha Madigan, has announced that the sculptor Eva Rothschild will represent Ireland at the 2019 Venice Biennale alongside curator Mary Cremin, Visual Artists Ireland reports. The selection was made based on Rothschild’s proposal to present a pavilion that ‘build[s] on current dialogues around notions of precarity, environmental change and the ongoing political instability’. The pavilion, which Rothchild will turn into an immersive environment, will further address how these issues have an impact on society and ask visitors to question their role and responsibilities as ‘global citizens’. Mary Cremin, who is currently the director of Void Gallery in Derry-Londonderry, will support Rothschild in delivering the 2019 exhibition.
In a statement, Rothchild has said: ‘I am delighted and honoured to have been chosen to represent Ireland at Venice 2019, I look forward to working closely with Mary Cremin and the team at Void to develop the pavilion. My intention is to make a sculptural environment which engages with current social changes through embodiment, presence and materiality. I want to create a situation that suggests multiple sculptural possibilities for rearrangement and reordering in which it becomes difficult to distinguish renewal from collapse’.
25 April 2018