DUBLIN.- PhotoIreland presents the premiere of internationally acclaimed photographer Eamonn Doyle, artist-designer Niall Sweeney and composer David Donohoe’s new and extensive interdisciplinary body work AS IF, at the International Centre for the Image.
Eamonn Doyle’s practice has evolved rapidly over the last years from an acclaimed street photography approach towards intricate interdisciplinary and collaborative projects, frequently working with Niall Sweeney and David Donohoe. Their latest project, AS IF, presents an ambitious body of work that builds into a visceral and psychological articulation of the physical world and the psyche. It comprises silver gelatin prints, filmworks, montages, sound, music, painting, drawing and text.
Shot and recorded between Ireland and Japan—in city locations, on constructed studio sets, and in the photographic darkroom—the work assembles thousands of images with composed and recorded sound.
Presented in installation form, the events of AS IF take place simultaneously inside one structure, a structure that folds together the combined forces of an unstable material world and the inner worlds of its inhabitants. AS IF also draws on the processes, dynamics and sounds of its own making—of photography, the temporalities of the still and the moving image, the construction and destruction of sets and maquettes, and the making of, and moving to, music—often translating one through another.
AS IF builds on the ongoing pursuit of a ‘threaded pulse’ that runs throughout the collaborative work of these three artists. Together with their combined interests in music, performance and the pleasures and ravages of the city, the work draws on a range of influences that include Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project; Esprit Jouffret’s ‘hyper-cubes’, from his 1903 work, Elementary Treatise on the Geometry of Four Dimensions; Mr Benn, the children’s books and animations by David McKee; the dark metropolises of visionary science fiction cinema; Goya’s Black Paintings; the Latin palindrome, favoured by Guy Debord, in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (we go round and round in the night and are consumed by fire); and that nightclub they went to in Tokyo in 1994.
“Extraordinary, symphonic portrait of a city... gripping, hypnotic... a masterful piece of collaboration.” — The Guardian [on Made In Dublin at 212 Photography Istanbul]
Eamonn Doyle Born in Dublin in 1969, Eamonn studied painting and photography at college, graduating in 1991. He founded the internationally acclaimed D1 Recordings in 1996 and spent much of the next twenty years producing music and working in the independent music industry. Eamonn returned to photography in 2008, and his subsequent Dublin trilogy of work (i, ON, End.) formed the centrepiece exhibition at Rencontres d’Arles 2016. Fundación Mapfre Madrid staged the first fully comprehensive exhibition of his work in 2019. More recent bodies of work have taken him to the Atlantic coast of Ireland, the volcanic landscapes of Spain, and Japan. In 2024, Eamonn was awarded the David Octavius Hill Medal by the German Photographic Academy.
Niall Sweeney Born in Dublin in 1967, Niall is an artist, designer and theatre-maker. In 2000, he founded the multi-award-winning creative studio Pony Ltd. in London with electronic musician Nigel Truswell, where they continue to create work internationally across art, design, print, theatre, film, performance, installation, music, publishing, and writing. Niall studied alongside Eamonn in college and has collaborated with him since the early 1990s, as a collaborative artist, filmmaker, designer, curator and writer.
David Donohoe Born in Dublin in 1976, David is a composer, recordist, artist, performer and improviser. His work operates at the intersection of instrumentation, synthesis, field-recording and processing. His performance practice involves scored works, electroacoustic presentation and solo/collaborative improvisation. David is a long-term collaborator with Eamonn, composing music and sound for exhibitions, books and film.
