Limerick View: An Interview with Matt Packer about the 39th EVA International 2020 by

by 5. 3. 2023

Matt Packer is the director of EVA – Ireland’s Biennial in Limerick. He was the Director CCA Centre For Contemporary Art Derry at Londonderry and he co-curated the Lofoten International Art Festival in the North of Norway. We sat down to ask him a few questions about his long time curatorial practises and the forthcoming Biennial in Limerick.

TEREZA ZÁCHOVÁ
Let’s start a little generally. You are the director of EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art in Limerick and you focus only on commissioned artwork. Could you explain why you have decided to focus on new artwork?

MATT PACKER
We don’t solely focus on commissioning. It’s only relatively recently that we’ve introduced initiatives and directives that put a focus on commissioning. This includes our Platform Commissions programme – open proposal process for artists based in Ireland to produce new work – which we launched in late 2018. We also commission work through partnerships with other organisations and networks, such as through the Magic Carpets network or through direct collaboration with IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin), for example.

Commissioning is obviously about working closely with artists to bring new ideas into the world and creating opportunities for artistic response within the specific context of Limerick; the process of new work development (and especially site-based work) also becomes socially woven within this context.

TZ: I like your strong statement concerning EVA’s vision very much: “To lead in creating experiences and encounters of world-class contemporary art that activate Limerick as a place of creative endeavour and cultural destination”. However, don’t you think it’s problematic for the Biennial that Limerick isn’t the capital of Ireland?

MP
I don’t agree with the problematic that you describe. Venice, São Paulo, Istanbul, Gwangju – many of the most established biennials do not take place within the capital city of their respective countries, in fact. A biennial is an opportunity to provide a temporary catalytic framework to a particular context, and in this sense there’s some logic in the idea that the biennials are often better suited to contexts where there isn’t already a developed artistic infrastructure. In an Irish context, there have been previous projects that have proposed a biennial type structure in Dublin (ROSC, Dublin Contemporary etc), and I’m sure there will be again.

TZ
How might the psychical spaces of the Biennial invite greater audience engagement and inclusion?

MP
I’m not sure what you mean by psychical spaces? We work across a number of different venues for each edition – some of them institutional partnerships, such as with the Limerick City Gallery of Art and the Hunt Museum, but also a wide variety of ex-industrial and ex-commercial spaces. This approach is partly out of necessity in developing a large-scale project that out-scales the exhibition infrastructure in the city, and it’s also partly of course about creating encounters of interest to artists and publics. Each edition of the biennial is different, and we’re often vulnerable to the whims of the property-development plans in the city in terms of what can be made available to us.

Sam Keogh, Integrated Mystery House, Installation view at EVA 2018, photo: Deirdre Power, Courtesy the artist and Kerlin Gallery.

TZ
How does the exhibition of the Biennial integrate to the accompanying programmes for educational projects?

MP
Yes, the educational and public programme is a large part of the biennial programme. It’s also something that we’re increasingly doing beyond the duration of the biennial itself. A good example is the Better Words project that we developed throughout 2019 (effectively between biennial editions). The project has involved working across five schools in the Limerick region and over 150 school children aged 8 – 12, toward developing an experimental child-led vocabulary for contemporary art and culture. The project developed by thinking through the issue of language that is commonly identified to be a barrier for so much broader public access to contemporary art and yet so important to art’s own development. Following the workshop process, which was completed in May 2019, we are now preparing a publication that will be released in October. Each biennial is also developed with a concurrent programme of talks, seminars and screenings typically designed to extend the thematics of the biennial and particular artists.

TZ
You are also a part of an international project called Magic Carpets. Could you tell me how you integrated with choosing artists to work in the EVA International?

MP
We’re used to working through partnership and the different processes that can often be involved in that partnership, so in the case of Magic Carpets it’s not so different. Each edition of the biennial is developed through a thematic framework of reference, so we have sought to work with artists through the Magic Carpets network that could extend these ideas in interesting ways consistent with their ongoing research interests.

TZ
As I am well aware, you always invite new young curators from abroad to work in Ireland. For instance, the forthcoming Biennial curator is from Turkey, a totally different context concerning country and culture. What key element do you use to invite young curators or why are you interested in them?

MP
We don’t necessarily invite ‘young’ curators, and many curators in our recent editions have very well established international careers and profiles. Our programme model has changed ahead of the 39th EVA International so that the appointment of the international curator is one central channel of programme within a broader biennial programme that we’ve called the ‘Guest Programme’ (as opposed to it being the only channel of programme). It means that there’s more we can do directly as an organisation to initiate particular projects and partnerships for artistic and strategic reasons. It also means that the task of the invited curator can be more specified. I think the important thing is that we use this invitation to open up new lines of international research and network, and also as a way to introduce a curatorial methodology that we’re perhaps less familiar with in an Irish context.

TZ
Do you also want to show the problematic threat of fast consumption?

MP
I don’t think that there’s been an edition of EVA since 1977 that hasn’t in some way been critical of consumerism in some form or another! The upcoming 39th EVA International uses the 19th century reference ‘Golden Vein’ as a reference point. Golden Vein was coined in the 19th century, prior to Ire- land’s independence from the United Kingdom. It was a term that was used to identify (and promote) the agricultural bounty of the Limerick region. The upcoming biennial is not so much using this reference as a premise, but more as a kind of compass-point for a variety of artistic positions and concerns that relate to the environment, land-use, future agriculture and resource exploitation. Any consumerist criticisms that are likely to emerge in the biennial programme are going to relate to these specific ideas and trajectories.

John Gerrard, Solar Reserve (Tonopah, Nevada), 2014, Simulation Installation view at EVA International 2018, photo: Deirdre Power Courtesy the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery, Simon Preston Gallery, and EVA International.

TZ
My last question for you as EVA’s director is how would you think now about the environmental threat in regards to the forthcoming Biennial? Would you change anything?

MP
Do you mean that the Biennial itself is a model that produces environmental damage? I think that’s true to a certain extent. There’s a cliché of biennials being excessive projects where artworks and artists are mobilised across the world, and though I’m reluctant to generalise biennials in this way – I think that we’re at a stage where some of the assumptions of international ‘best practice’ are now being understood as unsustainable if not actively detrimental. EVA is part of a small network of biennials called ‘Occasional Groundworks’ with LIAF, GIBCA and Contour. We convened the network precisely because we didn’t really feel ourselves reflected in the broader ‘biennialization’ types of conversation that were really being led by biennials at an entirely different scale of resources. The focus of Occasional Groundworks is precisely to re-think the biennial model, toward sustainability (both economic and environmental) and better ethics of what it means to work internationally.

Thank you Matt for your answers. We are looking forward to the forthcoming Biennial!

Tereza Záchová is an art curator and art educator.

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Tereza Záchová