SAVE THE DATE ✨✨✨ Next solo show « Templates of Chance » Starts June 7th @rua_red, Dublin 🇮🇪
Overcoming addiction is a slow and personal process, involving all our strengths and vulnerabilities. Relapse is not a failure, but a necessary part of the long journey towards change.
During a series of conversations with the Drug & Alcohol Task Force in Tallaght, it became clear that people needed a physical symbol for this journey, to visualise and hold in their hand the path they’ve travelled. These tokens represent victorious moments: 10 years, 5 years, 1 year, 6 months, and perhaps most importantly, the first day—the day of decision and action (« Take the risk or lose the chance »).
Five tokens were designed, each stamped with symbolic figures and mantras collected from meetings with those on their journeys to recovery. The lighthouse, the anchor, the mirror… These tokens are now given in exchange for significant personal achievements in Tallaght’s communities.
In a video installation, these tokens are entrusted to Rua @rua_magician a magician and Dubliner who excels in manipulation and deception. With his sleight of hand, he plays with our expectations; the time-charged metal vanishes at his will. When his hands are bound, gravity takes over. Appearing and disappearing from the world, becoming present or fading away.
Curator: @maoliosaboyle
Production Manager: @joyce.dunne
Senior Technician: Hugh McCarthy
Assistant Technician: Paul Heary
Technical Development: Radek Pater and Agnieszka Kozioł, Eidotech
Videographer @eamo.ie
Photographer @juliette.rowland
Token Design @nynketynagel
Token production: Des Hurley
Essay @marc.donnadieu
Text by @anthony_van_den_bossche
Designers: Rossi McAuley and Jenny Leahy
🙏🏼 Participants from Jobstown Assisting Drug Dependency (JADD); Mick Duff; Lynn Ruane; Jacqueline Sheehy, Tallaght Drug and Alcohol Task Force SDCP; Tom Jenner, Technical University Dublin – Tallaght Campus
🙏🏼 The Arts Council of Ireland, @kulturlx – Arts Council Luxembourg, South Dublin County Council Arts Office and Creative Ireland.
🙏🏼 « Private donor, in memory of Seán O’Donnell »
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