Ireland at Venice: ASSEMBLY Ireland’s Representation at the 2025 Venice Biennale
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From: Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media
- Published on: 8 May 2025
- Last updated on: 8 May 2025
Ireland’s Representation at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia – opened today, Thursday 08 May. The exhibition, Assembly, is curated by Cotter & Naessens Architects. Ireland at Venice is an initiative of Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council of Ireland. The Ireland at Venice 2025 team consists of architects Louise Cotter and David Naessens, multidisciplinary artist Michelle Delea, woodworker Alan Meredith, curator Luke Naessens and sound artist David Stalling.
The Minister for Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport, Patrick O’Donovan TD said:
I wish the very best of luck to Cotter and Naessens as they represent Ireland at the 2025 Venice Biennale, the world’s leading architecture event. This is an enormous achievement and opportunity for both the architects and the country providing an opportunity to showcase the best of Irish architecture to a world audience. Participation at the Venice Biennale raises the profile of Ireland’s strong and growing architecture culture. My Department through Culture Ireland commissions Ireland at Venice in partnership with the Arts Council, and it is an important date in our cultural calendar. I’m wishing everyone involved the very best of luck at the Biennale this year.
Architect Yvonne Farrell of Grafton Architects formally opened the Irish Pavillion in Venice, accompanied by Director of Culture Ireland Sharon Barry and Head of Architecture at the Arts Council Fionnuala Sweeney. The exhibition, Assembly, was inspired by by the innovative political model of the Irish Citizens’ Assembly, the design is a multi-sensory installation that offers visitors a soundscape to be inhabited and a space to be heard.
The first Citizen’s Assembly in Ireland was established in 2016. During an ‘assembly’, members of the general public are invited to help the Oireachtas and Government address policy challenges facing Irish Society. Assembly poses the question of how architecture can benefit the concept of the Citizens Assembly and facilitate open communication.
Functionally and poetically, the pavilion reflects on assembly as a product and process of making. Harnessing age-old, renewable materials, skills and collaborative wisdom, Assembly has been hand-crafted from Irish beech trees sourced and seasoned by woodworker Alan Meredith and features a carpet handwoven by Ceadogán Rugmakers to welcome visitors into its interior. Its resonant voids house a chorus of soundboxes, each delivering a partial fragment of a polyphonic soundscape incorporating music, poetry, interviews with the Citizens’ Assembly’s designers and participants, and recordings that reflexively document the structure’s own fabrication created by David Stalling in collaboration with Michele Delea. An instrument designed to harmonise a multitude of dissonant voices, the pavilion reflects on assembly as a product and process of making.
Describing the intentions behind Assembly, Louise Cotter says:
From the beginning it was important that the piece was a phenomenologically rich, sensorial experience and that the materials were handcrafted and sensuous. Here we offer a space for visitors to experience the installation as embodied beings, with their senses and memories. We do not demand any particular interaction from visitors: They are free to reflect and sit with strangers in slow time.
Assembly, supported by the Arts Council, will tour nationally through 2026 following its exhibition in Venice. A film documenting the making of Assembly, which has been directed by Michelle Delea, shot by Felix Castaldo, with sound by David Stalling, will form an important part of the national tour.
More information on the Pavilion can be found at: www.irelandatvenice2025.ie
ENDS
Editor’s notes:
Ireland at Venice is an initiative of Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council. The selection of the team to represent Ireland was made following an open, competitive process, with international jury members. Assembly builds on the strong presence Ireland has had at the Biennale Architettura in recent years with the exhibitions In Search of Hy-Brasil (2023), Entanglement (2021) and Free Market (2018).
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Biographies
Cotter & Naessens Architects are an architecture and design studio based in Cork City since 2001 and founded by Louise Cotter and David Naessens. Their work is focused on public projects and is informed by design research, through teaching and design competitions, notably dlrLexicon in Dun Laoghaire and most recently the FOCAS Research Institute, Technical University Dublin. Cotter & Naessens were one of 16 practices invited to participate in Close Encounters, which was a commission for the Biennale Architettura 2018 Freespace, curated by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara. Louise Cotter and David Naessens also participated in one of the first International Architecture Exhibtion of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Aldo Rossi in 1985. The work of the practice has been nominated twice for the EU Mies Award and in 2016 dlrLexicon received the RIBA Award for International Excellence, and the RIAI Awards for Best Public Building and Best Cultural Building in 2015.
Michelle Delea is a multidisciplinary artist engaged in architecture, poetry, filmmaking and event promotion. She holds an MA in Architecture from Cork Centre for Architectural Education, UCC and currently works between practice and education. Her writing has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Type.ie, and Architecture Ireland. She produced the documentary film The Sprawling Octopus of an Elevated Highway (2022), regarding architectural activism in 1960s Cork.
Alan Meredith graduated from UCD School of Architecture in 2015. His work is primarily interested in revealing the inherent properties of wood, with making seen as a reflective journey. His projects include one-of-a-kind furniture, public space design, and a collection of sculptural wood-turned vessels. Alan won The Golden Fleece - Special Award 2023 and had his first solo exhibition in Ireland, Quercu, at Lavit Gallery, Cork in 2024. His work is stocked in numerous galleries and regularly presented at prestigious fairs in Europe and the United States.
Luke Naessens is a curator and art historian. He received a PhD in art history from Princeton University in 2024 and is the 2024–25 Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Centre for American Art at the Courtauld Institute. He previously worked as a member of the curatorial team at the Barbican Centre in London.
David Stalling is a composer, sound artist, improviser and audio producer whose practice transcends the traditional definition of composing. He works with various media: acoustic and electronic sound; field recordings, moving image, lighting, and scientific data. Current and recent projects include Earth Traces (2023–24), at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, Cambridge; all these worlds (2022–23), at the Museum of Literature Ireland, Dublin; and Under the Feet of Shadows (2024), a multimedia installation by EL Putnam and Mike McCormack. Stalling is represented by the Contemporary Music Centre Ireland and his work is published with Farpoint Recordings.
Assembly is commissioned by Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council Ireland.
To date, support and funding partners include:
Culture Ireland
The Arts Council of Ireland
Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media
Dublin City Council
Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland
Dublin City Council
Cork City Council
Cork County Council
Laois County Council
Creative Ireland
Jacobs Engineering
Cork Centre for Architectural Education
United Hardware
Henry J Lyons
Embassy of Ireland (Italy)
Technical support from Ceadogán Rugs, Punch Consulting Engineers, iGuzzini, Innosonix.