Programme
Museum of Mythological Water Beasts: Height and Depth
Watch your step and mind your head. Ormston House welcomes you to the Museum of Mythological Water Beasts, a project about, along and on the River Shannon.
The Museum of Mythological Water Beasts (2016-) began with an open research process, meeting with catchment custodians to learn about the wild spaces and species of the city. Grounded in community wisdom, the project returns indoors over the next six months with a series of artistic commissions. The evolving exhibition-environment will also feature an open call via our new Membership Scheme, and objects and artefacts from the municipal collection, extracted through archaeological digs of the river.
Andreas Kindler von Knobloch, Tom Watt and Tanad Williams present two new site-specific commissions for the Museum of Mythological Water Beasts. Height is a multi-use structure providing a stage, a viewing platform, and a work-station where a local ecclesiastical decorator will teach us techniques in restoration: to assess damage to the elaborate pilasters and to scrape back almost 150 years of paint to discover what colour the building was in 1872.
The artists envision the Museum as an active and interactive workspace where we can learn from one and other, and to conduct experiments in conservation, as well as imagination and discovery. Depth brings us back to the notional foundations of the Museum with an underground artwork and over a tonne of water from the River Shannon. This murky and undefined space is at odds with the position of authority often associated with the rigid institution, and opens the project up to new streams of research and activity.
Acknowledgements
Ormston House would like to thank the artists, our Board of Directors, Limerick Fire Brigade, Sheila Deegan at Limerick Arts Office, Mike Fitzpatrick at Limerick School of Art & Design, Pat Lysaght, Ray O’Halloran at Limerick City Build, Gary McMahon at the Ilen Project, Pat O’Connor at Castleconnell Fisheries Association, Matthew Potter at Limerick City Museum, Jürgen Simpson at the University of Limerick, Sharon Slater, Tom Treacy at Shannon Foynes Port Authority.
The Museum of Mythological Water Beasts is co-curated by Niamh Brown and Mary Conlon, and kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland Visual Arts Project Award.
