Marie Farrington “Diagonal Acts” at Kunstverein Aughrim

“Diagonal Acts” is an ambitious new multi-platform project by Marie Farrington spanning 2025. Beginning at Kunstverein Aughrim in Spring 2025, and supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, the project continues with public workshops at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin, and exhibitions at The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon and Commonage Projects, London.

“Diagonal Acts” arises from research into geological and archaeological imaginations of gaps, openings and thresholds, exploring the boundaries of the body in the landscape from various counter-topographical perspectives. The project expands on and elaborates a hybrid practice of ‘Theatre/Archaeology’ (Shanks/Pearson, 2001) exploring symmetries between staged presentations and field work via their continual renegotiation of categorical boundaries and their shared interest in memory, partiality, fragment, trace and assemblage.

Through intrinsically contingent material interventions and participatory gestures, Diagonal Acts excavates the ‘/’ in Theatre/Archaeology as a site of interdisciplinarity, convergence, and borders reworked, articulated through the sculptural position of the diagonal line. Thinking across and between sites through conditional modes of encounter, “Diagonal Acts” explores diagonality as a relational and collaborative stance, temporarily ‘leaning’ against contexts, communities and histories.

The material outcomes in “Diagonal Acts” are supported by a range of collaborations, and connected by a public programme of generative elements devised to critically engage audiences in person and online, enhancing and expanding participation and access. From an olivine access ramp to a digital archiving repository, possibilities for encounter are crafted and considered across platforms.

The exhibition “Diagonal Acts” at Kunstverein Aughrim is on view throughout Spring, closing on 31 May 2025. Kunstverein Aughrim is supported by The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon and by Wicklow County Arts Office through the annual Strategic Project Award Scheme.

at Kunstverein Aughrim
until May 31, 2025