Created by artist, designer and nightclub pioneer Niall Sweeney, Club Chroma Chlorologia is a newly commissioned series of site-specific works installed in the gardens and grounds of the 17th-century Royal Hospital Kilmainham, which combine to create unlikely interventions that you can encounter, discover and take part in over the Summer.
Over the Summer months, Club Chroma Chlorologia expands beyond its dazzle-patterned gateway — located at the north-facing aspects of the RHK, where the giant Club Chroma manifesto calls visitors to action — and down into the historic gardens at IMMA.
Born on the grassroots dancefloors of the marginalised, Chlorologia merges the mythologies and desires of the combined settings of the formal garden and underground nightclub — as a place of projected fantasy, collective emancipation and transformational power. The title Chlorologia makes playful reference to the energy transformations of light in plant biology, tuning in to the diverse forces of nature in a universal desire to dance freely again.
With its language of signs set amongst the flickering eyes and raging tongues of the polychromatic creatures of the labyrinth, Chlorologia lures you through the geometries of the garden with theatrics of visibility & invisibility, protest & parade, joy & disorientation — inviting you to be present, to show your colours, to move together, and to have some fun.
“Come into the garden with Chlorologia and dance amongst the divine communications of the iridescent oracles of Club Chroma in a dazzle of anti-camouflage. Here you parade as deities of the good times, spirits of the marginalised, lovers of the exquisite bodies of the living and the dead. Chlorologia compels all fantastical creatures to rise up against gravity and vibrate into life.” — Niall Sweeney
This latest iteration by Niall features several new artwork configurations that draw on an array of sources that includes DIY clubbing, signage, placards, protest and public speech. Niall’s graphics have beaten the radical hearts of some of the most pivotal campaigns for equal rights of the LGBTQ communities in Ireland. To coincide with Dublin Pride on 26 June 2021, IMMA is delighted to unwrap its second phase of Club Chroma Chlorologia in the formal gardens, where some other surprises are still to come.
The presentation of this project is kindly supported by the Office of Public Works (OPW).
