Ríoghnach Hardiman

From Charlemont to Parnell is a multi-screen video installation staged within a museum-coded environment. The work examines Irish cultural identity as a constructed image mediated through institutional display. Influenced by the presentation of Irish vernacular artefacts in the National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Arts and History and the National Museum of Ireland – Country Life, the installation considers the museum as a site where cultural identity is staged, repeated, and preserved through spectacle.

Structured through repetition and variation, the moving-image work adopts the contrapuntal logic of a musical fugue. Drawing on the spectacle theory of Guy Debord, the work interrogates Irish exceptionalism and the display systems through which distinctions between fine art, vernacular craft, and historical artefact are produced.