Riddle of the Burial Grounds

Venue: Gallery, Cube and Space Upstairs of Project Arts Centre

Lara Almarcegui, Stéphane Béna Hanly, Rossella Biscotti, Simon Boudvin, Matthew Buckingham, Mariana Castillo Deball, Dorothy Cross, Regina de Miguel, Harun Farocki, Peter Galison & Robb Moss,  Tracy Hanna, Mikhail Karikis & Uriel Orlow, Nicholas Mangan, Tejal Shah

Curator: Tessa Giblin

Riddle of the Burial Grounds attempts to conceive of a time in which language, signs and forms will be beyond our current comprehension. How do we communicate beyond the decaying half-life of our current knowledge? And what will we leave behind?

“Do not destroy these markers. These standing stones mark an area once used to bury radioactive wastes. These wastes give off invisible energy that can destroy plants, animals and people. The rock and water in this area may not look, feel or smell unusual but may be poisoned. These markers were designed to last 10,000 years. Do not drill here. Do not dig here.” (Containment, a film by Peter Galison & Robb Moss (in progress)).

We are drawn to objects, to markers, to ruins. We excavate, restore, categorise, explore, conceive and create them. These signs from the past are evidence of a will to communicate. They are enduring windows into belief systems, social behaviour and technical proficiency. And those things that are made and erected today are revealing of the present context – of our knowledge, our fascinations, and the extent to which we are able or willing to consider our place within the Anthropocene.

Over two black box theatres and a gallery, Riddle of the Burial Grounds brings together artworks which measure themselves against geological and human time. They are artworks that give speculative forms and images to periods, epochs and eras: vast, unknowable expanses of time that help us to look outside of ourselves and the worlds we inhabit and, in so doing, attempt to stretch the possibilities of human imagination. Artists have situated works in or around various unique subjects: man-made ruins and extraordinary natural phenomena; excavated sites and empty-bellied mines; language and its limits; burial, ritual, forecasting, futures and radioactivity; interspecies hybridity; climate change, wastelands and wildernesses.

There is a mysterious, romantic element about wondering about the past, however critically one goes about it. The ancient sites and images are talismans, aids to memory, outlets for the imagination that can’t be regulated, owned, or manipulated like so much contemporary art. (Lucy Lippard, Overlay, 1983).

Click here for descriptions of artworks and further text about the exhibition from the curator.
Click here to book tickets to Peter Galison & Robb Moss in Conversation, Monday 20 July.

Riddle of the Burial Grounds is presented in partnership with the Mondriaan Fund, the Goethe-Institut Dublin and the French Embassy in Ireland, with further thanks to Dublin City Council and The LAB, the Science Gallery Dublin and all the artists and lenders to the exhibition. It will develop into a new exhibition to be presented at Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp in 2016. Project Arts Centre is core funded by the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon.

Project Arts Centre is Ireland’s multi-disciplinary arts centre in the heart of Dublin. In addition to forthcoming exhibitions by David Claerbout and Gretchen Bender, our nationwide tour of Eva Kot’atková & Dominik Lang’s exhibition Wasteland will open at Wexford Arts Centre on 13 June. We are also pleased to announce that the 2015 Steirischer Herbst exhibition (Graz) will be guest curated by Tessa Giblin, Curator of Visual Arts of Project Arts Centre.

Admission to the visual arts at Project Arts Centre is always free.
Gallery exhibition hours: Mon – Sat, 11am – 8pm (excluding bank holidays)