Making Irelands: Marianne Keating & Yvonne McGuinness
About this Event
Date & Time: Thursday 30 July / 6-8pm
Location: The People's Pavillion, IMMA
Free, booking required
IMMA is excited to bring together two artists working with moving image, Marianne Keating and Yvonne McGuinness, for a one-off in conversation and screening event.
Marianne Keating presents her film installation Cad Leis a Bhfuilimíd Ailínithe/To What Do We Align, 2025, in cinematic form, while McGuinness’ What’s Left Us Then, 2023, will be shown in Dublin for the first time.
Join us for a conversation between these two artists following the screenings, moderated by Aisling Clark, Curatorial Fellow: Exhibitions at IMMA.
Screenings (continue until 13 August on Living Canvas at IMMA)
Marianne Keating, Cad Leis a Bhfuilimíd Ailínithe / To What Do We Align, 2025 (20 minutes)
Cad Leis a Bhfuilimíd Ailínithe / To What Do We Align situates Ireland within the broader anti-colonial movement. The film traces the country’s political and economic developments throughout mid-20th century, from the culturally insular, economically protectionist society of the 1940s and 50s to a lunge toward foreign direct investment in the 1960s. Though Ireland’s liberation from the British Empire inspired decolonial struggles across the globe, To What Do We Align asks how Ireland has distanced itself from the ‘colonial other’. Through a collage of archival footage leading up to the historical founding of the Non Alignment Movement, Keating’s work explores how Ireland has oriented itself towards the interests of global superpowers, rather than supporting true decolonisation for all.
Yvonne McGuinness, What’s Left Us Then, 2023 (27 minutes)
What’s Left Us Then examines marks left by concrete on the landscape of rural Ireland, where in the artists’ words, ‘the meeting of the bucolic with the brutalist is often contested’. Lending a poetic quality to the investigative form, the film surveys abandoned buildings and sites of buildings-in-progress, considering the cultural, historical, and emotional weight of concrete forms. Through encounters with architects and quarry owners, McGuinness offers a meditation on decay, endurance, and the contradictions of modern shelter. Commissioned as part of the Engaging with Architecture programme funded by the Arts Council of Ireland, the film premiered at the Galway International Arts Festival 2024.
About the Artists
Marianne Keating is an Irish artist and researcher, exploring Irish history, particularly the complex legacies of colonialism, migration and empire and the often-overlooked experiences of the Irish diaspora, especially in Jamaica. Through visual, material, and oral traces, and supported by intensive on-site investigation, she reconstructs and reimagines these fragmented histories. She seeks to reinsert previously muted or silenced voices into the archive, giving them renewed presence through her practice-based work as an artist researcher. Her work sits within ongoing discourses on post/neocolonial identity and diaspora.
Yvonne McGuinness is a filmmaker and visual artist whose work critically examines place, belonging, and social dynamics within environments. Through performance-based films and installations, often created in collaboration with communities, she explores collective histories and identities. McGuinness’s interdisciplinary practice embraces chance and layered narratives, blurring the boundaries between documentary and performance.
IMMA’s Fruition café van will be open in the courtyard for refreshments and treats until 6pm!
This event marks our July edition of Dublin by Dusk at IMMA. Dublin by Dusk is a city wide initiative that invites you to experience Dublin city late on the last Thursday of every month. For more details
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