Created by Niall Sweeney, Club Chroma Chlorologia is a newly commissioned site-specific work installed in the gardens and grounds of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham.
Club Chroma Chlorologia is the first stage of a gradual extension of the recent exhibition CHROMA presented in the Project Spaces in the museum’s galleries in 2019/early 2020. The CHROMA project explores ideas of intersectionality, as it relates to themes of the body in relation to colour and space, identity politics, cultural blindness, forced anonymity and the theatrics of visibility and invisibility. Embracing the self-determination of personal freedom that underlines many LGBTQ personal histories and experiences, the project aims to build new alliances across a diverse set of communities. Taking as its departure point the creative, activist and written work of Derek Jarman that comprised a major IMMA retrospective called PROTEST! last year, for which Niall designed the substantial publication that accompanied the exhibition.
In this latest evolution of CHROMA, Club Chroma Chlorologia now moves its attention to the outdoors and activates two very large hoarding blocks, located between the north-facing aspects of the 17th-century Royal Hospital Kilmainham. Created in response to the formal geometry of one of Dublin’s most historic gardens, Niall Sweeney’s dazzling black and white graphics elevate the hoarding into an installation space for public participation, one that billboards the Club Chroma manifesto that calls visitors to action. At various seasonal moments, keep an eye out for a procession of multi-coloured protest placards of sensory body parts that will populate different quarters of the grounds in unexpected ways, enticing a variety of engagements throughout the year.
In the current climate of social distancing and renewed interests in restorative benefits of nature, gardening, outdoors, public spaces and community – over the coming year IMMA is delighted to collaborate with Niall on Club Chroma Chlorologia that will grow and evolve, as we welcome all visitors to enjoy the community grounds and gardens unique to IMMA.
“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 humans to rise up against gravity, vibrate into life and blossom together in full colour.” — Niall Sweeney
As Niall explains, Chlorologia engages with the magic and mystery inherent in the convergent settings of the formal gardens and the underground nightclub, — as places of projected fantasy, transformational power and realisation of the self. Hoarding patterns riffs off the geometries of both the gardens and the dancefloor, in a black-and-white dazzle pattern that fizzes the eyes. Viewers are invited to be participants, to parade around the vibrating patterns, to shape-shift and make some moves, becoming all the more colourful as they do. As participants glide between the two hoarding monoliths of dazzle towards the garden, they should incant and perform together the Club Chroma manifesto, — to their own divine rhythm — a love song thrown to all bodies of the cosmos. Chlorologia invites you to be present, to dress up, to move together — and have some fun.
The presentation of this project is kindly supported by the Office of Public Works (OPW).