Sean Lynch | Adventure: Capital, Ireland at Venice

The Irish Tour at the Royal Hibernian Academy
Sean Lynch Adventure: Capital, Ireland at Venice.
The Irish Tour at the Royal Hibernian Academy
July 08, 2016 – August 21, 2016
RHA Gallery II

Combining sculpture, video and graphic elements, Adventure: Capital explores the allegories and underlying narratives of the contemporary architectural and social environment through encounters with the sculptures of John Burke, the quarries of Cornwall, megalithic ‘cursing’ stones, urban vandalism, and Irish Free State banknotes.

Alongside Adventure: Capital, Lynch presents a new video installation, Campaign to Change the National Monuments Acts, 2016 that investigates the legal status of metal detectors in Ireland. Following national controversy around the finding of the Derrynaflan Hoard, a medieval treasure trove uncovered in the 1980s, the state hastily placed a blanket ban on the public use of all devices used to search for archaeological objects. This legislation effectively destroyed the fledgling Irish metal detectorist community of Ireland. Using the tropes of a promotional video, Campaign to Change the National Monuments Acts advocates for a change in these authoritarian laws, where ideas of nationhood, individual freedom, and the need for new forms of community-led heritage are all explored on a journey narrated by Lynch’s long-time collaborator Gina Moxley.

8 July 2016