Richard Malone's Five-Metre Sculptures for EU Council
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- Richard Malone has been commissioned to create a five-metre sculpture installation, titled Cuimhne agus Séadchomhartha (Memory and Monument), for the Council of the European Union's Justus Lipsius and Europa buildings as Ireland takes on the EU presidency this month.
- Malone is constructing the work in lambing sheds on a farm in Stradbally, County Laois, while also fitting out the buildings' presidency suites with sofas, rugs and burnished wood vessels made by contemporary Irish artists, makers and craftspeople.
- Malone argues that Irish art history has been made by "one type of man," with work by queer and female artists and craftspeople "erased or anonymised," and questions why stitch samplers and quilts aren't collected or taught — comparing British male collectors to those who "cut through" Egyptian mummy wrappings "to get to the gold" while ignoring the quilts inside.
- Malone has collaborated with Björk on multiple occasions, including designing the dress she wore in her Atopos music video, and says the pair share a "similar wavelength" with "no PR involved or brand deals."
- Malone designed a jumpsuit for MoMA's 2017 Items: Is Fashion Modern? exhibition and, in 2023, designed the centrepiece of the Royal Academy of Arts' summer exhibition — a brilliant blue hanging sculpture titled Filiocht Faoi Bhron, as an Dorchadas — with just six weeks' notice.
- Malone's father James, a decorator from Wexford who died earlier this year, helped with many of his son's exhibitions, including laying carpet underlays and building vitrines for a show responding to modernist architect Eileen Grey at her villa E-1027.
Why it matters: Malone's installation deliberately contrasts with the "polished sculptural works" commissioned by prior EU presidencies by foregrounding fragile textiles and overlooked Irish craftspeople typically excluded from such institutional commissions. With Ireland holding the rotating EU presidency this month, the Brussels display gives an art-world outsider an unusually prominent platform to argue that quilt and stitch work by queer and female Irish makers deserves the museum-level recognition long reserved for other mediums.
