Pictured at the RHA launch are artist Sean Lynch and Curator of Adventure: Capital and Director of EVA International, Woodrow Kernohan. Pic: Marc O’Sullivan
The official tour of Ireland’s entry into the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 Adventure: Capital by artist Sean Lynch is at the RHA Gallery in Dublin until August 21. 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 controversy around the unearthing of a medieval treasure trove, the Derrynaflan Hoard, in the 1980s, the Irish state 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 promotional videos, Campaign to Change the National Monuments Acts advocates for a change in these authoritarian laws. 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.