Jesse Jones: Tremble Tremble

Admission free
Commissioner & Curator: Tessa Giblin

“…artist Jesse Jones has pulled off a triumph. Tremble, Tremble is a Pandora’s box of a film installation which unleashes a stagey, supernatural yet utterly compelling witch on the audience.” –Moira Jeffrey, The Scotsman

Jesse Jones threw a spotlight on feminism and women’s issues with her work Tremble Tremble when she represented Ireland at the 57th Venice Biennale, particularly informed by the growing female bodily autonomy movement in Ireland. Since then the political landscape has changed dramatically, with calls for change echoing around the world. In the wake of #MeToo, #IBelieveHer, revelations about the gender pay gap, and in the year that Irish citizens have won the opportunity to vote in an historic referendum on Ireland’s 8th Amendment, Jesse Jones returns to Dublin with the Irish premiere of this timely work. Jones will transform Project’s main theatre into a multi-media installation which re-imagines feminist history and law, presenting an artwork she describes as a “bewitching” of the judicial system.

The title  is inspired by the 1970s Italian wages for housework movement, during which women chanted “Tremate, tremate, le streghe sono tornate! (Tremble, tremble, the witches have returned!).” At the time of this rising social movement in Ireland, Jesse Jones returns to the witch as a feminist archetype and disrupter who has the potential to transform reality. Tremble Tremble imagines a different legal order, one in which the multitude are bought together in a symbolic, gigantic body, to proclaim a new law, that of In Utera Gigantae.

“Did I disturb ye good people? I hopes I disturb ye, I hopes I disturb ye enough to want to see this, your house, in ruins all around ye! Have you had enough yet? Or do you still have time for chaos? Hah? More?”

Based in Dublin, Jesse Jones has been researching the ways in which the law transmits memory between generations and over time. Her research weaves between an archaeological dig of a 3.5 million year old female specimen, to the suppressed voices of the witch trials of 16th century Europe, the symphysiotomy trials, and abortion legislation in Ireland today. The new world order to be found in Tremble Tremble churns testimony, court statements and song into a towering bodily incantation. Sitting somewhere between sculpture, film and theatre, Tremble Tremble evolves each time it is shown—pulled apart, re-animated, it becomes part of its context: in Singapore at the ICA of LASALLE College of the Arts in November 2017 it included a burning table, which, in the tradition of the ‘hungry ghost’, held burned copies of an Irish declaration from 1821 that repealed  the Witchcraft Act of 1586, and surrounded by gestures that inscribed marks into the walls of the space. At Project Arts Centre, some of these gestures remain, with Jones also inserting new monuments alongside the giant bones: a millstone, mist, and a sacred water source blessed by nine St Bridget Wells of Ireland, all make their way into the room.

Tremble Tremble is a collaboration with theatre artist Olwen Fouéré, sound artist Susan Stenger and commissioner and curator Tessa Giblin, Director of Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh.

A book, published in English and Italian, features the writing of Silvia Federici, Tina Kinsella, Lisa Godson, and Tessa Giblin. Designed by Åbäke, with photography by Ros Kavanagh, Tremble Tremble / Tremate Tremate is co-published by Mousse Publishing and Project Arts Centre, and will be available to purchase from Project Arts Centre from the duration of the exhibition.

Join in the conversation with hashtag #TrembleTremble #IrelandatVenice #ProjectArts

Since being commissioned for the Venice Biennale in 2017, Tremble Tremble has been presented in Singapore at LASALLE College of the Arts, and following the Dublin presentation at Project Arts Centre it will travel to Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh for October 2018, and Guggenheim Bilbao in the summer of 2019.

Ireland at Venice is an initiative of Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council. In 2017 it was produced and supported by Project Arts Centre, and the Pavilion Production Manager was Aaron Kelly. Principal Sponsor: Dublin Port Company. International Partner: LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. Production Partner: Institute of Art, Design + Technology (IADT). Proudly supported by CIT Crawford College of Art & Design; Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh College of Art and University of Edinburgh; South Dublin County Council and Rua Red; Dublin City Council; Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and the patrons of Ireland at Venice 2017 and Project Arts Centre’s Visual Arts.: Emma and Fred Goltz, Jennifer and Adrian O’Carroll, Ronald A. Christaldi, Monica Flood, the Kerlin Gallery, Donall Curtin, Jonathan Ellis King, Sue Raethorn, Gearóid Faherty and Martin Mackin.

The Irish presentation of Ireland at Venice is supported by the Arts Council as part of its commitment to promote the visual arts to Irish audiences.

For media information, interviews, and pictures, contact: 
Project Arts Centre
Melanie Wright, Communications Manager
melanie [​at​] projectartscentre.ie
T +353 1 8819 625

Jesse Jones
Born in Dublin in 1978, Jones is an artist. She studied sculpture at NCAD before completing an MA in visual arts practice at IADT in 2005. She teaches in Fine Art programmes at CIT Crawford College of Art & Design in Cork, and has worked and exhibited extensively both at home and abroad.

Jones’ work takes many forms; from gallery based films, installations and sculpture, to large scale public events and performance. She has collaborated with diverse groups; from opera singers and marching bands to activists. Her practice largely aims to excavate the hidden meaning within our popular collective consciousness, and she explores how historical instances of communal culture may hold resonance in our current social and political experiences.  Her practice also reflects and re-presents historical moments of collective resistance and dissent. Politics have always been important to her artistic thinking.