CROOK MARR-y FYUNSH-ke

Curated by Debi Paul (Glandwr) as a companion artowork within the project houseWORKhomeWORK.

Live Performance, Knockmaree Cist, Phoenix Park, Dublin, 2026.

Exhibition Statement:

Knockmaree Cist (ca. 2,500 BC) in the Phoenix Park held two skeletons, a periwinkle shell necklace, a flint knife and a bone dress-toggle. These were removed to the National Museum. The cist has been cracked, and is now held up by a concrete block. What happens when we remove grave holdings and put them in museums? How should we relate to ancient, hallowed graves today? What might they teach us? Who might we honour at them? Should we caoin (keen) at them, or celebrate them? 

James Joyce knew Chapelizod well. It features in ‘Finnegan’s Wake,’ which he named after an Irish ballad in which a man- presumed dead- is revived by whiskey. The end of the book links up with the beginning, and references Fionn Mac Cumhaill, who shares his name with ‘Fionn Uisce’ which later became the ‘Phoenix’ Park. In John Cage’s ‘Roaratorio’ (1979), Cage read excerpts from Joyce’s book while Irish folk musicians played, drawing deep from their tradition, but this time, free form was encouraged and an improvised listening approach. 

Taking forgotten Leinster Irish dialect, sea-shell percussion and funeral-game song as beginning points for research, this is an invitation for experimental DIY ritual and community at a sacred place, and to consider what death and rebirth might mean to us at this moment.