aemi and Project Arts Centre are pleased to host an artist talk and screening with Eva George Richardson McCrea as part of Project Art Centre’s open research project, Clear Away the Rubble / Glan an Spallaí ar Shiúl. Richardson McCrea’s film Rope (2022) was part of the project’s film screening programme which ran in Project Arts Centre’s Gallery from 21 April until 14 May 2022. At the upcoming artist talk on Thursday 2nd June, Eva will talk about the themes and research of Rope (2022) and her practice in general.

In Rope, three men dressed in smart casual attire sit around a table in the decaying corpse of a building. They eat food from takeaway cartons and drink champagne as they engage in small talk about holidays and hobbies, have a conversation about Alfred Hitchcock’s film, Rope, and discuss various aspects of property development – among other things.

Alongside improvisational dialogue devised in collaboration with the actors, and the conversation about Rope, which is developed from online reviews, the majority of the other dialogue is constructed from interviews and writings of Daniel Doctoroff, former CEO of Sidewalk Labs (Google’s “smart cities” start-up); Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class; and Patrik Schumacher of Zaha Hadid Architects.

The location of the shoot is a vacant building owned by a prominent property developer in Frankfurt’s Ostend. The food in the film was provided by a pop-up Jamaican restaurant in the same courtyard as the building where the film was shot. What the property developer plans to do with these buildings in the future is unknown.

This artist talk and screening will take place in Project Arts Centre’s Gallery on Thursday 2nd June, from 7pm – 8pm. The film transcript will be available in printed form. The event is free, book a place here.

Biography, Eva George Richardson McCrea
Working primarily in moving image, Eva George Richardson McCrea’s practice takes specific sites as points of departure into exploring social architectures, relations of power and systems of belief. Borrowing from television, documentary, cinema and theatre, her work draws on a range of source material, from philosophy and current affairs to the language of advertising and aspirational living. Through processes of layering various registers of reality and fiction, her practice explores the idea of the ‘truthful under imaginary circumstances’ – or non-realist realism.

Recent and past exhibitions include Rope, Löwengasse, Cologne (2022); Sharp Service, Goethe Institute, Dublin (2022); Filmmuseum Frankfurt (2022); Table Games, curated by Alison O’Shea, The Crypt at St. Lukes, Cork (2022) and curated by Johanna Weiß, FONDA, Leipzig (2021) with Nina Nadig; Women and the Machine, VISUAL Carlow, (2021) with Michelle Doyle and Coilin O’Connell; Riddles of the Stones, CCA, Glasgow, UK (2020); Made Ground, Green on Red Gallery, Dublin (2019) with Frank Sweeney. Screenings include Agitation Co-op, Temple Bar Galleries and Studios, Dublin, Ireland (2021); Irish Film Institute, Visual Carlow, 65th Cork International Film Festival, as part of AEMI Signals and Circuits (2020, 2021). Her work is in the Arts Council Collection and she is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.