Excerpt from artbasel.com
They say that if you throw a stone in Ireland, you will hit a writer. But these days, you will just as easily hit a world-renowned visual artist, a subversive rap group, an Oscar-winning actor, or a prominent director. Authors such as Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Edna O’Brien, Anne Enright, and many others have paved the way for the country’s current artistic boom, with creatives of all stripes, from Cillian Murphy to Hozier, flying the flag on the global stage. Its art world, too, is dense with talented individuals.
In the remote reaches of Ireland’s northwest, collaborative duo Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty have been making visual art for over a decade. Both are originally from Dublin but moved away from the capital as rents began to rise and studio space became unaffordable. Their work engages strongly with Ireland, but pushes against idealized visions of the country, testing the possibility for creating ‘a new narrative identity for Ireland and the Irish diaspora.’