Jaki Irvine works with video installation, photography, music composition and writing. Her immersive video and sound installations tell stories through fragmented, elliptical and open-ended narratives informed by rigorous research. Irvine picks out evocative details from the landscape or cityscape, in particular honing in on Dublin and Mexico City, two cities that have shaped and informed her practice. Contested histories, sonic bricolage, the built environment, and the customs and communities of a city’s residents have all found their way into Irving’s deep-reaching and polyphonic work: songs that filter through a city’s streets, overheard conversations, the flap of a hummingbird’s wings are given equal gravitas. Her attention is often turned to the peripheral or the undervalued: recentring stories or figures written out of history, particularly female figures, or presenting an alternative approach to the present, making space for strangeness. Humans and nature become intertwined in her imaginative worldview, with plants, birds and creatures permeating her practice, and adding to the sense of the unknown and unknowable, and blurring the boundary between the real and the imagined.
Jaki Irvine lives and works in Dublin and Mexico City, and is a regular artist advisor at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam.
Jaki Irvine
Xilitla Window, 2019
video and sound installation, 4:34 minute loop duration, edition of 3
Jaki Irvine
Ack Ro’ - 3 piece sync, 2019
video and sound installation, 3 synced monitors and audio, 20:39 minute loop duration, edition of 3
Jaki Irvine
Mill Lane, 2019
video and sound installation, 3:02 minute loop duration, edition of 3
Jaki Irvine
Shot in Mexico: On the Impossibility of Imagining the Numbers of Dead and Disappeared (Vertical), 2014
vinyl wallpaper and a set of 20 framed archival pigment prints on Hahnemühle paper
dimensions variable
Jaki Irvine
If the Ground Should Open..., 2016
video and sound installation, 8 separate monitors (black & white 4:3 ratio), 11 separate audio sound tracks, 48 mins duration and set of six etching on archival paper
Collection of Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
Jaki Irvine
Before the Page is Turned
Printworks ii, 2011
HD DVD, duration: 5 minutes 11 seconds
Jaki Irvine
Old conditions for new love, 2008
lightjet print on fuji crystal paper framed
edition of 3 + 1 AP
80.5 x 98.5 cm / 31.7 x 38.8 in
Collection of Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
Jaki Irvine
In a world like this, 2007
lightjet print on fuji crystal paper, mounted on aluminium
100 x 187 cm / 39.4 x 73.6 in
Collection Bank of Montreal, Canada
Jaki Irvine
The Silver Bridge, 2003
eight-channel video
Collection of Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
Jaki Irvine
The Actress, 2003
DVD projection, duration: 3 minutes 40 seconds
Collection of Dublin City Gallery The Huge Lane
Jaki Irvine
Ivana’s Answers, 2001
DVD projection, duration: 10 minutes
Collection of Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane and Butler Gallery, Kilkenny
Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 2005
Jaki Irvine has exhibited at Tate Britain, London; Louisiana Museum, Denmark; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; With de Witte, Rotterdam; Museet d’Arte Moderna, Stockholm; Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland; the ICA, London; ACCA Melbourne; Galerie für Gegenwartskunst, Freiburg; Museu de Arte Moderna do Río de Janeiro; Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts, San Francisco; Estorick Collection, London; the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin; the Glucksman, Cork; and Dublin Contemporary 2011. In 1997, she represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale. Solo exhibitions include Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Chisenhale Gallery, London; Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden; Delfina Project Space, London; Henry Moore Institute, Leeds; The Model, Sligo; The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Project Arts Centre, The LAB and Draiocht, all Dublin. Re_setting_s, a collaborative exhibition with Locky Morris, recently travelled from The Complex, Dublin to Void, Derry (2022–2023).
Jaki Irvine
Ssh Ow, 2025
De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-On-Sea
Photo: Rob Harris
Jaki Irvine & Locky Morris
Re_sett_ing_s, 2023
Void Gallery, Derry, 2023
Photo: Simon Mills
Jaki Irvine
ro' ro', 2021
The Bower Gallery, London
Jaki Irvine
If the Ground Should Open…, 2018
as part of the group exhibition Nachtstücke at E-WERK, Freiburg, Germany
Photo: Marc Doradzillo
Jaki Irvine
If the Ground Should Open…, 2016
Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland
Jaki Irvine
A Room of one's own, 2015
Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City
Jaki Irvine
In a World Like This, 2007
Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK
Jaki Irvine
The Silver Bridge, 2005-06
Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland
Jaki Irvine
Ack Ro'
Kerlin Gallery
24 January - 29 February 2020
Cinematographer: Esme Pum McNamee
In this partially devised improvised audio-visual music performance, Jaki Irvine projects and manipulates her video works in realtime to create a "live score" for a group of musicians.
Ssh Ow includes Ack Ro’, an immersive thirteen-channel video installation, and a newly commissioned immersive live work, SHWO EM TEH WAY OT GO HMOE, to be presented in the auditorium on 24 May 2025.
In conjunction with their collaborative exhibition at Void, Derry, Jaki Irvine & Locky Morris present Re_sett_ing_s_Knots as a billboard display located at Strand Road & Garden City, Derry.
The premiere performance of Jaki Irvine's Re_sett_ing_s (for live mixed chamber ensemble and live video/VJ) will take place as part of Dublin Sound Lab, a showcase as part of Music Current Festival 2023.
Jaki Irvine & Locky Morris, Re_sett_ing_s is a collaborative two-person exhibition at Void Gallery, Derry.
One of Ireland’s most highly regarded artists working in video installation, photography, music composition and writing, this aemi screening presentation draws attention to an early phase of Irvine’s career when she was making single channel work on analogue film. Introductory text by Gwen Burlington.
ro’ ro’ is new work by Jaki Irvine and a companion piece to an immersive 13-channel video and sound work, Ack Ro’, showing concurrently at Frith Street Gallery, London.
