Photo: Niamh O’Malley, ‘Gather’. Installation view, Pavilion of Ireland, 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Photography by Ros Kavanagh

The Venice Biennale has for 120 years been one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world. The Biennale was established in 1895, when the first International Art Exhibition was organised. In the 1930s new festivals were born: Music, Cinema, and Theatre and the Biennale  took on the multidisciplinary character that it has to this day. The Biennale has an annual attendance of over 500,000 visitors.

The Venice Biennale remains the most important international showcase for contemporary arts. The biennial International Art Exhibition offers a unique opportunity for Ireland to showcase Irish contemporary art on a global stage. The Biennale is a vital platform for Irish artists, curators and commissioners to gain international profile and to generate opportunities. The Venice Biennale serves as a global showcase for artists and offers a prominent platform for Irish artists to engage with international audiences, curators and gallerists.

Since 2005, national representation at the Venice Biennale has been a Government initiative led by Culture Ireland in partnership with The Arts Council.  Both partners consider the Venice Biennale to be an important opportunity for artists' development and for Irish curators to work in an international context. 

Following their presentation at Venice, the Ireland at Venice exhibition subsequently returns to Ireland for a National Tour. The Arts Council is delighted to be in a position to continue to support the Irish presentation of the Ireland at Venice National Tour, as part of the commitment to our ten-year strategy: 'Making Great Art Work' which aims to support artists to create ambitious, innovative work and to engage audiences across the country.

Artist, Eimear Walshe, with Sara Greavu and Project Arts Centre as the curator will represent Ireland at the 60th Venice Art Biennale in 2024. To view the artists and commissioners that have represented Ireland at Venice Biennale from 2005-2022, please visit the Ireland at Venice Archive.

An open call is issued biennially to invite expressions of interest for the appointment of the Curator and Commissioner of Ireland’s National representation at Venice. The selection of the team to represent Ireland is made following an open, competitive process with international jury members, in partnership with Culture Ireland and The Arts Council.

Irish representation at 60th Venice Art Biennale in 2024

 
Photo: Cian O'Brien, Artistic Director, Project Arts Centre; Orla Moloney, Executive Director, Project Arts Centre; Eimear Walshe, Artist; Sara Greavu, Curator of Visual Arts. Photo by Cáit Fahey

The Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports and Media, Catherine Martin T.D. has announced the selection of artist, Eimear Walshe, with Sara Greavu and Project Arts Centre as the curator, to represent Ireland at the 60th Venice Art Biennale in 2024.

The Venice Biennale 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.

Minister Martin, said: “I would like to congratulate Eimear Walshe, Sara Greavu and Project Arts Centre on being selected to represent Ireland at the 2024 Venice Art Biennale. Participation at the Venice Art Biennale increases awareness of Ireland’s strong visual arts sector and is an important moment in an artist’s career. My Department through Culture Ireland commissions Ireland at Venice in partnership with the Arts Council,”

Eimear Walshe'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. Working with a range of deeply talented collaborators, their work proposes a relationship with land and shelter driven by collective agency and community. This work will return to Ireland on a national tour, supported by the Arts Council, in a variety of venues across the island.

The selected artist, Eimear Walshe said: “I’m very proud to be representing Ireland at Venice this coming April. My practice is deeply enriched by being embedded in Ireland, in a place, and with people, so beloved to me. At the same time, my work emerges from the context of a nation in escalating crisis; this is the subject of my work. With Sara Greavu as curator, we aim to make a pavilion in tribute to those who persist, against the odds, in being shelter for each other.”

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. Eimear Walshe’s extraordinary work speaks of and from a precarious generation, and proposes new ways to claim a sense of kinship, place and love; refusing estrangement from history and community, language and tradition. We are so thrilled to work with them for Ireland's representation in Venice. The pavilion of Ireland at Venice will resonate within the larger framework of Adriano Pedrosa’s 60th Venice Biennale, even as it draws our attention to our own social and material lives, transforming our understanding of ourselves.”