The International Architecture Exhibition at Venice, La Biennale di Venezia, is the world’s leading architecture event. Along with the International Curated Exhibition, and collateral events, it features more than 60 national exhibitions from around the world. In 2018, the total number of visitors to the exhibition exceeded 275,000 and in 2021, having been postponed from 2020, the Venice Architecture Biennale attracted over 300,000 visitors, despite global challenges.

Ireland at Venice is Ireland’s national representation at the Venice Biennale. It is led by Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council and aims to raise the profile of Irish architecture and create opportunities for Irish architects internationally.

As well as serving as a global platform for Irish architecture, the Venice Biennale offers Irish architects the opportunity to engage with a diverse international audience, stimulate discussion and influence future trends in architecture. It also offers the participants a unique opportunity to connect with international architects, curators and collaborators.

In 2023, Ireland’s exhibition, In Search of Hy-Brasil, is curated by a team of five architects, Peter Carroll, Peter Cody, Elizabeth Hatz, Mary Laheen and Joseph Mackey. The exhibition builds on the strong presence Ireland has had at the Venice Architecture Biennale in recent years with the exhibitions ‘Entanglement’ and ‘Free Market’ and the curation of the 16 ^th International Architecture Exhibition at Venice in 2018 by Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell of Grafton Architects.

Following its presentation at Venice, the Ireland at Venice exhibition subsequently returns to Ireland for a national tour. Supported by the Arts Council, the tour provides audiences in Ireland with the opportunity to experience and engage with an Irish architecture exhibition of international standing.

Ireland’s representation at Venice is selected following an open, competitive process involving representatives of Culture Ireland, the Arts Council and international experts.

Ireland’s Representation at the 18^th International Architecture Exhibition at Venice, La Biennale di Venezia 2023

In 2023, Ireland’s exhibition, In Search of Hy-Brasil, is curated by a team of five architects, Peter Carroll, Peter Cody, Elizabeth Hatz, Mary Laheen and Joseph Mackey.

In Search of Hy-Brasil presents fieldwork from Ireland’s remote islands, investigating their diverse cultures, communities, and experiences. The exhibition has a focus on renewable energy, ethical food production and biodiversity, capturing the islands’ sustainable methods of livelihood through drawing, models, film, sound, writing and language, to raise awareness of the islanders’ management of resources and their balancing of the delicate equilibrium between culture and nature. The installation responds to the theme, The Laboratory of the Future, selected by the curator of the Biennale Architettura 2023, Lesley Lokko.

In Search of Hy-Brasil offers an immersive experience using local materials that highlight the traditional heritage of each island; for example sea sacks woven from discarded fishers’ rope, a linen tapestry mapping Ireland’s maritime zone and an abstraction of Sceilg Mhichíl made from Galway sheep’s wool. The installation includes large slabs of local limestone from the offshore islands of Inis Meáin, UNESCO World Heritage site Sceilg Mhichíl, and Cliara (Clare Island). In doing this, In Search of Hy-Brasil shifts between the global and the local, the territorial and the intimate and gives international audiences the chance to experience connections between the social fabric, cultural landscape and ecology of these islands. The exhibition is also steeped in the Irish language through voice, writing and song.

The exhibition takes place in Venice from May until November 2023 and, in 2024, will undertake a national tour, supported by the Arts Council. The tour will recreate elements of the installation on the islands, with the curatorial team seeking to create an enriched narrative, bringing voices from peripheral locations into mainstream conversations around our global future. The curators will also publish a book of essays on the exhibition and contribute to a feature documentary by Red Pepper Productions (under the TG4 and Arts Council partnership scheme, ilDÁNA), which will follow the process involved in the making of the installation, its exhibition in Venice and its return to Ireland.

Details of the 2024 Irish tour of In Search of Hy-Brasil will be confirmed later this year.

Click on the link here to view Ste Murray's film which will transport you to Hy-Brasil and give you a real sense of what the installation is like.

The In Search of Hy-Brasil Curatorial Team

Peter Carroll BArch MRIAI. Graduated from University College Dublin in 1995. He worked in the studios of O’Donnell + Tuomey in Dublin and Rafael Moneo in Madrid before establishing A2 Architects in 2005. He is Director of A2 Architects and Senior Lecturer, School of Architecture University of Limerick since 2007. Peter is currently running the third year studio in SAUL focussing on Clare Island and its ongoing relationship to the Praeger and Feehan surveys.

Peter Cody PhD MScAAD DipArch BScArch MRIAI. Graduated from the Dublin Institute of Technology in 1990, completed a master’s degree in architecture at Columbia University, New York in 1996 and a PhD at RMIT University, Melbourne in 2018. He worked in the studio of and Alvaro Siza in Porto before establishing Boyd Cody Architects in 2000. He is currently a Director of Boyd Cody Architects and assistant professor at University College Dublin. He exhibited an interpretation of the work of Eileen Gray at the Venice Biennale 2018 and previously exhibited at the Biennale in 2012 and 2006 with a focus on the depleted bog-lands of the Irish Midlands. He was Co-Curator of ‘Line to Surface’ at the Inaugural Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2007 with Peter Carroll.

Elizabeth Hatz AA Diploma / SAR / MSA, is a practicing architect, professor and art curator, sharing her time between practice, research and teaching positions at UL and KTH Stockholm. Built work includes Kodak Head Quarters Gothenburg, Stockholm Globe Arena and buildings for AKSO-Nobel, Stockholm. Hatz curated EVA 2010, Ireland’s pre-eminent art event. The head of SAR (Swedish RIAI) she cofounded Fargfabriken, renowned scene for Art and Architecture in Stockholm, where she is a board member.

Mary Laheen BArch, MUBC, FRIAI graduated from University College Dublin in 1981. She worked with de Blacam and Meagher Architects before establishing a practice in Dublin in 1995.  She is the author of various publications related to cultural landscape, and represents Ireland on the International Scientific Committee on Cultural Landscapes, ICOMOS. With Aoibheann Ní Mhearáin, Architect, she exhibited ‘Landscape and Lens’ interpreting the work of Jean Rénaudie at the Venice Biennale 2018. Mary has had a lifelong engagement with the islands of Ireland, in particular the drystone-wall field-boundary landscape of the Aran Islands. The nature-culture dynamic of the islands has informed and inspired her work in the practice and teaching of architecture.

Joseph Mackey BArch, MRIAI graduated from University College Dublin in 2010. He worked with the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Paris, Tom de Paor in Dublin, Eric Parry Architects and Niall McLaughlin Architects in London, before establishing Joseph Mackey Architects in 2015. He is a director at Joseph Mackey Architects and a senior lecturer at Cork Centre for Architectural Education. Joseph’s work has been exhibited at RIBA gallery in London 2010 and the Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2022.

For further information on In Search of Hy-Brasil, please see:

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