Irlanda: of de Blacam and Meagher

of de Blacam and Meagher (2010) was Ireland’s participation at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, 2010, of which I was co-curator with Tom dePaor, Cian Deegan, and Alice Casey, addressing the built and unbuilt portfolio of de Blacam and Meagher, an award-winning Irish architectural practice established in 1976. The overarching subject of the curation however was the dilemma of exhibiting architecture, particularly when amplified by its setting in the built intensity of Venice, and the high-key charge of the Biennale. Amidst the complexities of creating an exhibition about architecture within another architectural space and context, the installation performed as an exhibition display, replica archive, repository and reading room. The exhibition in Venice took the form of an oversized (A2 approx.) unbound book Irlanda: of de Blacam and Meagher (2010), (Maybury, dePaor [eds.]), comprising five discrete volumes, published in an edition of 9,000 copies for free distribution and arranged as paper stacks on five items of bespoke joinery in counterpoint with the architecture of the San Gallo oratory. The curation directly addresses the Biennale’s theme ‘People Meet in Architecture’. To visit the exhibition was to encounter and activate the artwork by moving through it, handling and removing copies of each volume. The viewer-reader was able to walk amongst the stacks, browse the publication inside the oratory, and take copies away. The space was transformed by the interaction of visitors who interrupted the grid by browsing, disturbing and removing copies, making a physical imprint on the space, collectively changing its form. If a visitor chose to take copies home, a second, slower, engagement of close reading might occur over time.