Kilkenny crafted wool is central to an international exhibition in Venice

A Kilkenny craft company is playing a central role in an Irish exhibition about islands off the coast, currently installed in the city of Venice.

In search of Hy-Brasil is an exhibition at Ireland’s national pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023. It 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 exhibition 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 wool was processed at Cushendale Woolen Mill in Graignamanagh, and Miriam Cushen with her husband Trevor Ging travelled to Venice for the opening of the exhibition.

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The installation includes large slabs of local limestone from the offshore islands of Inis Meáin (Inishmaan), UNESCO World Heritage site Sceilg Mhichíl (Skellig Michael) 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 will continue in Venice from May until November and will then undertake a national tour of Ireland in 2024, supported by The Arts Council.

PICTURES: Grennan Craft Mill End-of-Year Show - Kilkenny Live

Pictures by Dylan Vaughan

Hy-Brasil is an island from Irish mythology. According to Irish folklore the island was visible from the west coast of Ireland for only one day every seven years, the rest of the time it was obscured by fog. Some of the earliest cartographers included it on their maps, despite it’s mythical status.