Performance Art in Ireland (Book)
A History
This book, the first devoted to the history and contemporary forms of Irish performance art in the north and south of Ireland, brings together contributions by prominent Irish artists and major academics.
Co-published with Live Art Development Agency.
Edition
This book, the first devoted to the history and contemporary forms of Irish performance art in the north and south of Ireland, brings together contributions by prominent Irish artists and major academics. It features rigorous critical and theoretical analysis as well as historical commentaries that provide an absorbing sense of the rich histories of performance art in Ireland. Presenting diverse visual documentation of performance art practices, this collection shows how performance art in Ireland engaged with – and in turn influenced and led – contemporary performance and Live Art internationally.
Co-published with Live Art Development Agency.
Áine Phillips is a performance artist and head of sculpture at Burren College of Art at the National University of Ireland, Galway.
Performing Political Acts: Performance Art in Northern Ireland: Ritual, Catharsis, and Transformation, André Stitt
Bbeyond and the Art of Participation, Karine Talec
Dublin and Performance Art, Twenty Years of Action 1970-1990, Amanda Coogan
The Development of Performance and Sound Art in Cork, Megs Morley interviews Danny McCarthy
Polyphonic Resonance: Sound Art in Ireland, EL Putnam
Survey: Ireland South of the Border High Performance 1984 Issue 25, Anthony Sheehan
The Development of Irish Feminist Performance Art in the 1980s and early 1990s, Kate Antosik-Parsons
Developing Dialogues: Live Art and Femininity in Post-Conflict Ireland, Helena Walsh
Performance Art in Ireland the New Millennium, Michelle Browne
Right Here Right Now, Cliodhna Shaffrey
Fragments on The Performance Collective: Subject to Ongoing Change at The Galway Arts Centre, Dublin, Ireland, Fergus Byrne
Out of Ireland: Irish Performance Art Internationally, Áine Phillips
'Philips rightly foregrounds the importance of her work as a reference book for performance arts training and ‘a stimulus for future projects and the evolution of Live Art in Ireland and else - where’. Yet, with its timely exploration of the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of arts practice, informed by intersecting political interests and influences, this volume also makes a major contribution to Irish studies and cultural studies more broadly.'
'Walsh provides an extraordinarily thoughtful analysis of the term ‘post-conflict’ in an Irish performance context, deftly traversing fifty years of political struggles and negotiations from ‘the Troubles’ in Northern Ireland to the investigations of clerical sexual abuse across the country (pp. 211–14). These are just two examples of the sense the book provokes that the vibrant, churning, frequently invisible history of performance art in Ireland is very much worth investigating. I fervently hope that Phillips’s volume and the names and works it brings to a wider audience for the first time pave the way for further exploration and analysis of these artists and their performance practices.'