Eimear Walshe: [É]IRE

This billboard by Eimear Walshe shows an aerial view of Bray Head, County Wicklow, Ireland. A gorse fire has revealed letters in the landscape spelling EIRE, with the first letter barely visible. EIRE is an anglicised misspelling of Éire, the Irish word for Ireland, and the official Irish language name for the country since 1937. 

Constructed from whitewashed stones, over 80 of these signs were dotted around the coast of the island’s southern 26 counties. Said to serve as a navigational aid for the Allies, and a mark of political neutrality to German planes – a signal to attack elsewhere, the markers did not cover the six northern counties of the island, involved in the war through Britain, with Belfast being subjected to very high casualty air raids by German forces.

Writing the country’s own name on the landscape to signal during the war was both a military strategy and a land-art scale gesture of international relations. Walshe has chosen to present this image during a time when Ireland’s political neutrality is in question: “The US military has for decades benefited from unchecked use of Irish civilian airports for military stopovers, from the illegal wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, to their assistance of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.”

Walshe is due to contest the Irish state in court on the subject this year. 

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About the artist

Eimear Walshe (b.1992, they/them) is an artist from Longford, Ireland. Their work traces the legacy of late 19th century land contestation in Ireland through private property, sexual conservatism, and the built environment. They have exhibited at the 2024 Venice Biennale, Van Abbemuseum, EVA International, the National Sculpture Factory, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, with work held in the collections of the Arts Council of Ireland and the Irish Museum of Modern Art.