EVA International is delighted to announce a partnership with artist Eimear Walshe (they/them) on the highly anticipated National Tour of ROMANTIC IRELAND following Walshe’s representation of Ireland at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
ROMANTIC IRELAND: A National Tour in Fragments will present a restaging of the acclaimed installation ROMANTIC IRELAND (2024) alongside a series of newly commissioned works and events in Limerick, Roscommon, Belfast and Dublin between August and November 2025. The tour will officially launch on Saturday 30 August, as part of the opening weekend programme of the 41st EVA International - Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art.
Walshe’s work has long addressed the question of Ireland’s representation. Refusing estrangement from the nation’s history, culture and tradition, the work confronts us with stories of empire’s displacement and ruination, the criminalisation of the colonised, and intergenerational conflict and betrayal.
ROMANTIC IRELAND comprises a multi-channel video installation and an operatic soundtrack housed in an immersive sculpture. Set on the site of an unfinished earth build, the video stages soapy, dramatic encounters between character archetypes from the 19th–21st centuries. These figures occupy an abstracted ruin, a site under simultaneous construction and demolition. The soundtrack is a five-voice opera describing the scene of an eviction, composed by Amanda Feery with a libretto by Walshe. ROMANTIC IRELAND was originally curated by Sara Greavu and Project Arts Centre for the representation of Ireland at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. EVA International has worked with Eimear Walshe to develop a National Tour programme which fragments and elaborates upon the Venice presentation.
ROMANTIC IRELAND: A National Tour in Fragments includes an exhibition of ROMANTIC IRELAND (2024), as part of the 41st EVA International in a unique adapted venue (29 August - 26 October 2025, Studio Saol, Limerick). EVA International will also premiere LANCERS/LOVERS (2025), a newly commissioned performance by Eimear Walshe (30 August, St. Johns Pavilion, Limerick). Walshe will present an in conversation event with the National Famine Museum in Strokestown (20 September, National Famine Museum, Co. Roscommon). Events in Dublin and Belfast will conclude the tour, with two concerts of music from the opera ROMANTIC IRELAND (2024) performed by 4 in a Bar, as well as performances by Walshe’s collaborators Amanda Feery, and Dylan Kerr (21 November, First Presbyterian Church, Belfast / 22 November, The Pepper Canister, Dublin). Further information and booking links to these events will be released from the end of July 2025.
Matt Packer, EVA Director:
“On behalf of EVA International, we are delighted to announce our partnership in delivering such important and resonant work to audiences in Ireland. Eimear is an artist that not only makes artworks that speak to our current social and political predicament, but is also highly engaged in the question of how art meets its public. ROMANTIC IRELAND: A National Tour in Fragments continues our relationship with Eimear Walshe over recent years, from the inaugural ‘Platform Commission’ in 2020, through to our recent TRADE SCHOOL event in Venice to coincide with their presentation at the Irish Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. The National Tour offers us at EVA an opportunity to exercise new ideas in this direction, while also consolidating our position as a leading presentation platform for some of the most artistically- innovative and critically-challenging work being produced in Ireland.”
Maura McGrath, Chair of the Arts Council:
“We are proud to support a National Tour of ROMANTIC IRELAND by Eimear Walshe, following a remarkable reception at the Venice Biennale last year. In the coming months, this tour will provide Irish audiences with opportunities to engage with this vital work on home soil. On behalf of the Arts Council, I would like to acknowledge the invaluable support of the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport, through Culture Ireland, in making this tour possible. We wish Eimear Walshe and the tour’s coordinators and presenters, EVA International, every success with this endeavour.”
The National Tour is supported by the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon as part of its commitment to promote the visual arts to Irish audiences. Ireland at Venice is an initiative of Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
