There is no shortage of Irish art on show at the 61st Venice Biennale. Isabel Nolan is representing Ireland with a body of work entitled ‘Dreamshook’, while Alan Phelan, Alice Maher and Rachel Fallon are among 110 invited artists taking part in the main exhibition, ‘In Minor Keys’, originated by the late curator Koyo Kouoh. Also, there’s Amanda Coogan performing at a collateral event running alongside what is the oldest international art exhibition of its kind in the world.
Nolan’s ambitious installation for the Irish Pavilion includes tapestry, sculpture and drawing and continues her often richly colourful exploration of dream states and thresholds. ‘Dreamshook’ refers to the sensation of waking from a dream, a liminal moment when reality is temporarily destabilised. Nolan’s interest in synergies between past and present takes inspiration from the story of Aldus Manutius, a 15th-century Venetian publisher whose pioneering pocket-sized books are likely prototypes of today’s paperbacks. She also draws on narratives originating in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, 13th- and 14th-century architecture, and the Book of Kells.
Nolan says the work feels particularly timely ‘when some of what we have taken for granted about being “modern” humans for 600-plus years is subject to new pressures and potentially revolutionary change… My relationship to art history is personal and not necessarily to do with the big story of art or the big pictures. It’s finding an artwork or artifact and, rather than looking for some authoritative sense of what we’re supposed to learn from these things, responding in a very intuitive and emotional way.’
Combining a sense of human intimacy with expansive gestures towards the vastness of time and space, Nolan’s ‘Dreamshook’ is curated by Georgina Jackson and produced by Cian O’Brien in collaboration with the Douglas Hyde Gallery. It shows at Venice until 22 November and will tour in Ireland next year.
Cristín Leach
