Episode 3: Re-imagining islands at Biennale ARCHITETTURA 2023

Season 1: Venice

Episode 3: Re-imagining islands at Biennale Architettura 2023 with Mary Laheen

Ireland’s Venice Biennale Architettura 2023 creative director team (L to R) Joseph Mackey, Elizabeth Hatz, Peter Cody, Mary Laheen and Peter Carroll.

Image credit: Marie-Louise Halpenny

Mary Laheen was one of five creative directors of the Ireland pavilion exhibition, at the 18th Venice Architettura Biennale 2023, titled In Search of Hy-Brasil.

In this episode, we discuss the significance of islands as we re-imagine the future. This idea is of particular interest to me as I continue my research, after completing my PhD on how the atmosphere of islandness can be conveyed through the photographic image.

Mary and I met in Venice during the finissage period when Australia and Ireland co-hosted an event with Scotland, titled Wanderlands. It was during this period, we found synergies between each of our pavilions, with some shared experiences as island nations navigating our history of colonisation by the British Empire.

In this third episode we cover:

• the theme of islands that underlies the exhibition concept In Search of Hy-Brasil

• how the exhibition draws inspiration from the mythological island of Hy-Brasil and the islands off the coast of Ireland.

• how the exhibition draws inspiration from the mythological island of Hy-Brasil and the islands off the coast of Ireland

• what we can learn from islands, particularly resilience and creativity

• designing an exhibition that is an atmospheric or sensory experience rather than a more traditional explanation-driven style

• the role of mythology in understanding islands and the connections between isolation, belonging and creativity

• the importance of decolonisation and decarbonisation in architectural practice and Mary’s interest in exploring new ways of building with sustainable materials and technologies

• parallels between island life in Ireland and Tasmania, highlighting shared experiences of living on the periphery and the creative freedom that comes with it, and

• reflections on future collaborations and the ongoing journey of exploring innovative approaches to architecture and design.

Whether you are interested in art as a unifying force for the political and social tensions of our times or are fascinated by the beauty and mythology of Venice, Art Destinations is a podcast that promises to reveal the intimate relationship between art, place and belonging.

Biography

Mary Laheen is an architect and assistant professor at the University College Dublin. She is one of the curators of In Search of Hy-Brasil, the Irish national pavilion, at Biennale Architettura 2023: The Laboratory of the Future. Mary has had a lifelong engagement with the islands of Ireland, in particular the drystone-wall field-boundary landscape of the Aran islands. The nature-culture dynamic of islands has informed and inspired her work in the practice and teaching of architecture. 

Transcript

Sarah Rhodes: My name is Sarah Rhodes. I'm an artist based in Tasmania, and when I was visiting Venice in November last year, I recorded an interview with Mary Laheen, one of five creative directors of the Ireland Pavilion, at the 18th Venice Biennale Architettura 2023. We spoke about their exhibition, ‘In Search of Hy-Brasil’. The exhibition looked at what we can learn from islands by focusing on the islands off the coast of Ireland, including the mythological island Hy-Brasil. This podcast, Art Destinations, will be published fortnightly and each season will focus on one place. The first season explores Venice through the experiences of artists and cultural storytellers and aims to provide an understanding of the layers tourists rarely see.

SR: Please take a minute to sign up to the email newsletter on the website artdestinations.org and follow this podcast on your hosting platform so you don't miss an episode. In Search of Hy-Brasil is aligned to this series on Venice, not only because it was part of the Biennale exhibition program, but because the exhibition was hosted on one of the world's most famous islands, Venice, in the archipelago of the Venetian Lagoon. While the settings are very different, one set of islands remote off the west coast of Ireland in the Atlantic Ocean and the other part of an historical major trade route in the Adriatic Sea, they share stories of mythology, isolation, connection and belonging. Welcome, Mary.

Mary Laheen: Thank you.

SR: Great to have you on the show.

ML: Great to be here.

SR: Your pavilion's exploring the concept or the notion of the island and what we can learn from that. So this is really important for this podcast series. So could you describe the island pavilion for us? Do a little walk through. What can we see? 

ML: Yes, so our pavilion and there are five of us, five architects who are the curators of the pavilion and our idea was to investigate and present the islands off the coast of Ireland for the Irish National Pavilion in the Biennale of Architettura this year in 2023. And the premise of it is that what is it that we have to learn from islands and the title is In Search of Hy-Brasil. And Hy-Brasil is a mythical island. The name comes from the Irish I-Brasil, which means the territory of the Brasil family or clan. And that name still exists in Ireland and in place names. But it was an island that people used to think that they saw out in the Atlantic. It would appear and disappear in the mists. And then it was mapped from the 15th century onwards. It was mapped up until the British Admiralty maps of the 19th century. But it's no longer mapped. So we started with myth because in a way the idea is that Hy-Brasil, the mythical island, is the island of Ireland but in the future. That we are looking for a future for the island of Ireland because the title, of course, of Lesley Lokko's exhibition this year, Biennale, is Laboratory of the Future. Decolonisation and Decarbonisation. So we're thinking about in the imagination the island is the laboratory or the possibility of a future for the island of Ireland.

SR: That was beautiful. It's a very atmospheric exhibition. The Blackwall Island is breathtaking when you walk in. It really sets the scene. It sort of makes you feel very warm inside and it's quite an original idea. And also Blackwall it's not as common obviously as Whitewall. So it's sort of this very unique. And also the film being in black and white and the limestone everything to these sort of natural colours. So it's this very sensory exhibition. And the fact that I don't speak Italian or Gaelic and you've got this text on the wall which you can't read but you get a sense of the idea. So I'm interested in this idea of an exhibition which in the Australia Pavilion we took the same approach. But there was a lot of tension around, whether we were doing the right thing in terms of evoking our ideas through a sensory way rather than actually with concrete information. Because in our exhibition there was a lot of information to share that we decided people could find out themselves essentially. So was that a similar discussion in your Pavilion? 

ML: Yes, we had that sort of discussion, for sure. We were wondering about how far to go with explaining or not explaining. And in a sense we took the most extreme position because we don't explain very much at all. And that is partly as probably because we, all of us as a group, I think, understand this idea which you're talking about as well that there are various ways of knowing. We tend to be very verbally based in Western, contemporary Western culture, but there are many ways of knowing and sometimes people understand things more deeply if they experience it through the senses. So that's part of it. It's also to do with where we are in the exhibition. We are the last pavilion of the Arsenale. Naturally an exhibition is, has got a lot of, an exhibition like this, an international, a really important international architectural exhibition, has got a lot of information being imparted to people.

ML: So as people walk through they're getting a lot of input, input all the time. And one of the early thoughts that we had about it is that the Irish Pavilion, being the last one, would be a place in a sense of rest and a contemplative place, a calm place. So with natural light in that space, coming through the windows that Western light, we haven't used artificial light at all except to pick out in detail the monastic ruins on top of the wall island. And we also have seats, sea sacks, and the sea sacks are made from recycled rope gathered from around the coast and they're very comfortable. So people come in and they sit down and that's the idea, that we want people to sit down there and wait there for a while and listen to the sound of the sea and look at the film and experience the installation.

ML: So part of that then, I mean, that's one of the reasons also why it's in Irish and not in English. That's one of the reasons, also because of the theme of Decolonisation and Decarbonisation. So I think in Ireland we have a different relationship to colonisation and decolonisation because we were colonised ourselves. And many of the European countries, especially our neighbour, were the colonisers. Ireland was the first colony. And many of the practices that went on there dating back to around the time of Elizabeth and just after Elizabeth the First were a sort of blueprint for then things to try out in the colonies. And ever since I was reading in Ngugi's Decolonising the Mind about how growing up in Kenya, he went to, and this is in the 1970s, he went to an English school where they couldn't speak their own language, couldn't speak his own language. He became a writer that began to write in his own language and they had to speak English. And the practices about that were just exactly what was happening in Ireland in the 1880s, a hundred years before. So anyway, that has got something to do with one of the reasons why we chose to put the exhibition, the installation in Irish and Italian. You have to put it in Italian. And so we have it in Italian and Irish only, and we don't use the English language.

SR: What is the role of the mythological island and how can it bring insight that the physical island can't? 

ML: Well, I think myth helps us to understand our lives or to understand the mythical island in some way. In a sense it's abstract or it's in the mind and it helps us to think freely about the physical island, the actual island of Ireland. And it links us back into the past as well, into the Gaelic world. I think that if you conjure up the idea of the mythical island, it releases you from contemporary conditions and allows you to think perhaps more clearly or with more imagination. With more openness, let's say.

SR: That's lovely. Well, I just finished my PHD and it was exploring how the photographic image can use atmosphere to convey the idea of islandness and islandness being the idea of where isolation and connection to nature, connection to yourself gives you a sense of belonging. And in some ways you could describe belonging as this sort of insularity in the positive way, where you are in this community and you're held tight. What I found was the Jeff Malpas, who's a philosopher based in Tasmania, he writes on place. What I found was that, or what he writes about is that when you are in a place that's got a confined boundary, you have this singularity of place. And when you have a singularity of place, it allows your mind to be free. You are in this sort of very kind of confined space in some ways, and then your imagination goes into the infinite.

SR: So actually when you're on an island, it's almost as though the opportunity to have a... It fosters, 'cause obviously it depends on the person. And it really does help. I find there's a high concentration of artists in Tasmania, so it's a really creative place and it fosters the imagination. So the idea of the mythological, we don't have these mythological stories in Tasmania that are widely known anyway, but it's a very sort of creative place. And so that's why I was asking, yeah, do you have that shared experience in Ireland, is it a, you were talking before when we weren't recording, when I was saying that when we were in Tasmania, I feel like we're at the end of the world.

ML: You know, I think that's interesting that you say that in Tasmania you feel like you're at the end of the world because in Ireland, we, particularly on the islands, off the coast, you really feel like you're at the end of the world because even the island of Ireland is an island off an island, off the continent of Europe. And we're right that, particularly on the islands, you are right up against the Atlantic, against the ocean. And when you look out there, it feels like the end of the world. We, at one time, we probably thought it was the end of the world, and it's why there was so much spiritual endeavor over there. I mean, there were early Christian period, the Aran Islands were full of monastic settlements and hermits, and also the Skellig Michael, which is the one that we show in our installation that definitely has a feeling of being at the end of the world, or being up against infinity, up against the unknown.

ML: So I'm sure that there are interesting resonances between us and Tasmania on that level. But I agree also that islands have, they have a particularity that it's because an island is a singular thing, it sort of effectively is a unity. An island is one thing, and in a sense it's also a container because it's one thing, and as you say, it has boundaries. It's a container and which is what promotes the feeling of being held and being able to sort of, let's say stand your ground or feel that you are there, that this is your place, that you have a sense of belonging, that you're standing on your land, which is this island. So it promotes, I suppose, a sense of belonging and a sense of unity. But it also, one of the things that we're quite interested in, in our installation is how living on islands, particularly off the coast or on the Atlantic forces people to be creative and resilient because they have very little to work with and they're very creative with what's there.

ML: Basically, it's just rock. And so over the centuries, over millennia, probably on the Aran Islands, they have found ways to be creative, to make land, even, to make soil, and to create places from very little, basically just stone, because there are no trees there. It's too extreme for trees and there's too little soil for trees to take root.

SR: It's amazing, actually. I mean, we're sitting in Venice, and Venice is also an unlikely place to make a settlement, let alone such an intense or dense settlement. And I've been interviewing a few artists, local artists who live here, all of them. There's been a common thread that the idea of the boundary is nebulous. While on an island it is bounded. And maybe it's because of the water, maybe because they're moving around in the lagoon, they're moving around and there's kind of this sort of sense of freedom, whereas they're in an archipelago, whereas we're in an archipelago too. But it's a wilder seas between, but it's really kind of, I wonder if it's about the creative imagination that the idea of the boundary is being challenged all the time. Yeah. I thought that was interesting.

ML: Yes. And also I think sometimes when we use the word insular, we think that it means that people are just very focused on themselves and not connecting with others. But in fact, island... Islanders are the opposite. And I think this is because, as you say, in Venice, because they're so connected to the sea and they're moving all the time on the sea, and they're connecting with other islands by boat. And so off the West Coast of Ireland, the island, people are all connected to each other very much through the sea.

SR: Well, actually the Aboriginal culture in the Furneaux Islands, of Flinders Island, Cape Barren Island, Big Dog Island, Badger Island, that they're all... That's true with the boats. They're moving between and they don't take long to go between islands. Whereas on the mainland of Tasmania, it's too far to be doing that. We don't have the proximity.

SR: Yeah, that's interesting. I also thought it was interesting, the idea, I just thought about it, of the monastery. The monastery is on the top of the island and it's kind of, you know, close to God. As a creative person, you are getting nourished and nurtured by spending time on your own in nature as a way of connecting and making. And for the people living in the monastery, they get having a similar spiritual experience but it's with God. And I thought that was quite nice because they're both about experiencing the singular to know yourself.

ML: And also the seas are very rough between the coast of Kerry and Skellig Michael because now you can visit that island, but it's limited the number of people who can visit. And there are times of the year when you can't go. But those monks went out there in little boats, but at that time, they were traveling all the time by boat. They traveled along the rivers in Ireland, and they went from Ireland to England and then onto France and went down along the rivers. And in Europe it was a completely different world. And certainly on the Aran Islands, there are very many early Christian settlements and medieval monastic settlements. I think they felt, yes, they're going to the edge of the world to be closer to God. That was the idea.

SR: There's kind of that idea of the periphery as well, that a lot of the artists that we were talking to, they enjoy or they feel safe on the periphery, on the edge as a way of kind of maybe pushing the boundary. There's freedom. There's freedom on the periphery and freedom to be yourself. And so I wonder if that played into it with the monks too. They had spiritual freedom.

ML: Yes. And I think the thing is that if you're on the edge of the world, you are away from the centers of power. And that's why you have more freedom because you're not within the status quo to the same way, to the same extent.

SR: That's beautiful. Just speaking now, I really understand why your prime minister is supporting Gaza. He's brave to speak out, but I can... It's so obvious now that you're speaking as to why he would do that.

ML: Yes. There's a very different attitude in Ireland to that because we see the... We understand the other side of it.

SR: What did you do over the six months? Because from an Australia's perspective so far we couldn't come and do any programs and things. We've just come at the end for the last week to participate in some events. But I know some of the pavilions have come over the six months.

ML: We didn't come back here very, I mean, I have been back here over the six months, but we haven't really organised events here. But we did have some events in Ireland to explain what we were doing at the university and to the architectural groups there. And we bring the exhibition back. Actually, I say I'm taking a break, but when we take it down in a couple of weeks, it comes back to Ireland. And then we're doing in 2024, it will tour in Ireland. And there's three months in the summer where it'll be in the Solstice Gallery in Navan, which is sort of in the middle of Ireland. And we're connecting the islands to that. So there are all events planned for the whole of next year.

SR: Oh, no. [laughter] And then we're hoping that we can work together in 2025 in Tasmania and make something with the exhibition, but we'll see.

ML: Well, that would be amazing. It would be just very nice to connect with Tasmania. And we are on other sides of the world, and yet there are all these resonances between the two places.

SR: Yeah, well, a lot of people say that the landscape is very much like Ireland, and obviously a large percentage of the population was Irish. And Irish. I wouldn't say they settled us, but the population did by default as prisoners. And the English brought the Irish to settle Tasmania. And your own practice? 

ML: Yes. Well, my own practice, I suppose, like many architects today, the whole focus now is on new ways of building. We have to build in different ways. And the pavilions, in fact, that I really enjoyed at this exhibition were ones that focused on that question of decarbonisation and different ways of building. Particularly, for example, Slovenia was so interesting. They were looking at vernacular architecture and how we used to build thinking without even thinking ecologically or sustainably. We were building in a way that was conserving energy. So I feel there's a lot of lessons to learn from that. And so both in my teaching and practice, that's what I'm interested in doing. But it's all new and it's a big mountain to climb, really, because there's a lot of new technologies that we have to understand.

SR: Also, the new materials. Some materials are aesthetically challenging to the eye and some are very clever. And I guess it's navigating what will work best, because the old ways, they're not made anymore like that.

ML: Yes, the Belgian Pavilion was very interesting. Also, they used fungi to make walls. So there's a lot of potential there, I imagine. But that's a completely new world for me.

SR: Yeah, it's nice to be extending yourself all the time, isn't it? 

ML: Yes. It's important, I think. Keep going.

SR: Yeah. That's good. Alright. Thank you very much, Mary, for coming on board.

ML: Thank you.

SR:Thank you for listening to this episode of Art Destinations. We will return in two weeks with another perspective on making art in response to Venice and the Venezia lagoon. Make sure you keep an eye on our instagram page artdestinations.podcast and website artdestinations.org for images and information relating to each episode. Ciao for now.

With support from a Regional Arts Australia Quick Response Grant 2023