Rita Duffy
The Souvenir Shop

One of the key leaders of the Easter Rising, Tom Clarke had a tobacconist shop - a place of exchange and chatter, as well as a hub of ideas and purpose. His whole family and livelihood was involved in what the balance of Dublin city was – an outpost of Edwardian Britain’s Empire alongside a revolutionary movement that was part of a changing Europe. Noblet’s sweet shop was another site of exchange, soon to become the first place of looting and anarchy when the Rising took place. Bearing this in mind, The Souvenir Shop examines the banality of how revolution happens and where it takes place, alongside the shifting meanings and fetishisation of the gestures and symbols that underpin conventional understandings of the ‘props’ of revolution. Installed in the atelier of the CCI, The Souvenir Shop sells all sorts of 1916 memorabilia with humorous puns questioning attitudes towards violence, commemoration and national identity.

Rita Duffy will also present new work around the iconic nationalist figure of Maud Gonnne and her writings on evictions witnessed in the west of Ireland.