Bardlore / This is Bardcore accompanies Irish artist Sean Lynch’s 2019 video, shot in Southampton and nearby Stonehenge featuring actors Gina Moxley and Timmy Creed.

Time travel and spirit possession drive a surreal narrative where a bard from seventeenth century Ireland ends up encountering the empty car park of an out-of-business Toys R Us, IBIS hotels and the heritage industry surrounding the Neolithic landscape.

Caught between a desire to fit into the constraints of the contemporary world and the seemingly liberal possibilities of a more poetic, distant life of the past, Lynch’s central characters grapple with the construction of public space and the role of history in the everyday.

Twenty-nine images from Lynch’s video are accompanied by an essay by Booker Prize 2019 nominee Kevin Barry, digressing from an overview of bardic culture of Ireland to consider Hollywood screenwriters, Mexican drug lords, and the strange rituals used in the making of verse itself.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition at John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (20 July – 28 September 2019) and at Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin (8 January – 1 February 2020).

Designed by Daly & Lyon, this publication features alternate titled covers, each individually rubber-stamped.

Co-published with Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin.