Press Release: Riverfest | Eco Showboat “Journey to the East” Hunt Museum Limerick, 29 April 2023

The Mayfly, solar powered riverboat, sets off on its Journey to the East from Askeaton on the Shannon estuary. Limerick City is the first port of call and the public are invited to see the Mayfly at Custom House Quay and to join the creative crew at the Hunt Museum on Saturday 29 April in the company of Limerick artists Chelsea Canavan & Deirdre Power and urban farmer Kevin Wallace.

The Eco Showboat Journey to the East is a five month arts expedition, from Askeaton in the west to Dublin in the east, aboard the Mayfly, flagship of the Eco Showboat project. Last year the Mayfly sailed from Limerick to Enniskillen, the first time such a voyage has been undertaken on a solar-powered vessel. The project is the brain child of artists Anne Cleary and Denis Connolly.

Anne & Denis are at the Hunt Museum on Saturday 29 April 2023 to meet the public and talk about their two year solar journey on the island’s waterways, showing their studies and observations of nature and telling of their encounters with artists, activists and scientists who explore with them the problems and promises of the freshwater environment. Marine biologist Rachel O’Malley shows children some of the little creatures that live in our waterways, and Helena Brady tells them about endangered species, invasive species and other problems facing fresh water environments.

With them are Kevin Wallace, who shows us Korean methods of urban farming and how he has been applying them in Limerick City, and artists Chelsea Canavan and Deirdre Power, who discuss their collaborations with the Eco Showboat in 2021-2022, and the work that they do with the waterside community in Limerick, exploring social and ecological questions in the urban context. Chelsea and Deirdre also investigate the carbon footprint of the food we eat in a workshop for families. See full programme here.

The Eco Showboat project has received the Arts Council Open call Award for 2021, as well as an SFI Discover Award, the Limerick Arts Strategic Award, and is supported by Creative Ireland, Waterways Ireland, Dublin City Council, the Local Authority Waters Programme and local authorities and universities across the country (full list of partners here).

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Contact:
anne@schooloflooking.org
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