Eva Richardson McCrea uses specific sites to explore the politics of the built environment. Working across video, sculpture and installation, Matt Welch explores relations between the body, architecture and infrastructural systems. This exhibition is their first joint body of work, conceived during their 2025 residency.

During the Cold War, West Cork was thought to be one of the few places where human life might survive a nuclear disaster. Though largely lacking any scientific basis, the idea attracted countercultural migrants who altered its social fabric and landscape. In 2002, fearing an attack on the British nuclear plant across the Irish Sea, the Irish government sent potassium iodate tablets to every household. Richardson McCrea was a child when a packet arrived at her home.

After harvesting a large quantity of kelp from Roaringwater Bay, at the foot of Glenkeen Garden, the artists extracted its naturally occurring iodine to reproduce the 2002 tablets in collaboration with scientists at University College Dublin. The tablets are presented alongside analogue photographs and a video produced during the residency. Part travelogue, part docufiction, it combines bucolic scenes with laboratory footage of the extraction process. An off-camera narrator guides the viewer through local histories, facts and rumours drawn from extensive research. The body of work on view at Crespo Open Space re-examines the idyllic topography of West Cork as a landscape where global fears and rural fantasy still collide.

Matt Welch (1988, Liverpool, UK) works primarily with sculpture, video and sound, which he combines to create immersive installations and environments. Welch explores the psychology, body, and environment of the human subject through the lens of urban infrastructures and historical settings. Organs and bodily processes such as the action of breathing or the human stomach have acted as symbolic devices in his work, representing the absorption, digestion, or circulation of information. Solo exhibitions include ‘Interiors’, Kunstverein Siegen, DE (2024), ‘Buildings’, Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt a/M, DE (2022), ‘Brain Fog’, Public Support, Vestfossen, NO (2021), ‘Adult Sculptures’, Dortmunder Kunstverein, Dortmund, DE (2019). Group exhibitions include ‘Live Stream’, Fluentum, Berlin (2024), ‘The Enormous Space’, Laden, Berlin (2023), ‘Basel Social Club’, Basel, CH (2023), ‘Biennale Für Freiburg’, DE (2023), ‘And This Is Us’, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt a/M, DE (2021), ‘Touch Release’, Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden, DE (2021), ‘Fassaden’, Elvira, Frankfurt a/M, DE (2021).

Eva Richardson McCrea (1990, Dublin, IRE) works across video, sculpture and photography. Her practice takes specific sites as points of departure for exploring the politics of the built environment and its role in the production of contemporary subjectivities and social relations. Layering both real and fictional elements, and borrowing conventions from television, documentary, cinema and theatre, Eva Richardson McCrea’s work draws on a range of source material, from philosophy and current affairs to the language of advertising and aspirational living. Solo presentations include ‘The Decameron/ Na Deich Lá’, Project Art Centre, Dublin, IRE (2025), ‘Video Series’, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Connecticut, USA (2024), ‘Rope’, Löwengasse, Cologne, DE (2022). Group exhibitions and screenings include ‘Living Conditions’, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, IRE (2025), ‘The Shimmering Beast’, ArtHub, Copenhagen, DK (2024), ‘Building Societies’, Composite, Melbourne, AUS (2024), ‘The Enormous Space’, Laden, Berlin, DE (2023). Her work is included in the Arts Council of Ireland National Collection.

Since 2023, Eva Richardson McCrea and Matt Welch have co-run the project space Laden in Berlin.