Kim Crilly, Lisa Heavey, Emma Hogan, Dylan Lennon, Eleanor McCaughey, Eoin O’Dowd, Fergal O’Mahony and Stephen Toomey.

The Epic of Gilgamesh 2012 is an ongoing project in which eight artists interpret The Epic of Gilgamesh, a story of the third millenium B.C.E.

The text The Epic of Gilgamesh was chosen because there is no standard version. Indeed, the text itself precludes the idea of standardisation. When we read modern English translations we may be inclined to forget that the original Epic of Gilgamesh, if it makes sense to speak of an original, was in all likelihood composed by a number of artists:  “… it appears that all the most important elements of the story existed as separate poems in the older Sumerian literature, and may have been, indeed probably were,  composed and recited long before they were written down.”  From this fragmented origin, The Epic of Gilgamesh was recorded, further fragmented, collated, interpreted, translated, sequenced, and, for millenia, forgotten.

The Epic of Gilgamesh contains unknowable elements, seperated as we are in time from many of the meanings and references in the narrative. For The Epic of Gilgamesh 2012, each of the artists has taken a fragment of the text to translate into another medium, and then, just as The Epic of Gilgamesh itself was collated, each translated piece will form a part of the narrative, The Epic of Gilgamesh 2012.

This is the first artist-initiated project in the new gallery/project space at Pallas Projects. Pallas welcomes participants to experiment with presenting their work in the context of an established gallery space with a dedicated tradition towards do-it-yourself initiatives and the professional development of emerging artists.

Venue: Pallas Projects/Studios, 115–117 The Coombe, Dublin 8.

Opening hours: Thursday—Saturday, 12—6pm

See About page for map to our new location.