The Pilgrim from Askeaton
Tue, Sep 12 2023
Above and below: Askeaton’s Friary where the body of the Barcelona merchant lies since 1784 and cloister (below). Photos: Latitudes.
“The Pilgrim” is a pilot exchange programme linking Barcelona with southwest Ireland, Latitudes with the organisation Askeaton Contemporary Arts), and Ruth Clinton & Niamh Moriarty with Catalan artist Eulàlia Rovira. Throughout 2023, two artist residencies and a public programme enhance new artistic and curatorial research and creates new possibilities for international collaboration around ideas of pilgrimage, relics, and twinning.
“The Pilgrim”’s curatorial framework derives from an extraordinary story from over two centuries ago. It is recalled that a Barcelona merchant named Don Martínez de Mendoza, one of the wealthiest men in Catalonia during the mid-1700s, murdered his son-in-law to avenge the death of his daughter in childbirth in a Barcelona convent years before. Don Martínez ended up living his last sixteen years as a pilgrim in penance in Askeaton, Co. Limerick. A cryptic inscription can still be found in the cloister of Askeaton Friary: “Beneath lies the Pilgrim’s Body, who died January 17, 1784”.
(Above and below) Inscription of The Pilgrim at the Cloister of Askeaton Franciscan Friary, Co. Limerick, Ireland. Photos: Eulàlia Rovira and Latitudes.
Throughout the Spring of 2023, Latitudes researched documentation in the Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona (Casa de l'Ardiaca) with the hopes of finding evidence of Askeaton's Pilgrim, browsing certificates of docking in the Port of Barcelona, licenses of the board of health, details of boat captain promotion, health patents, and plague-free certificates. With little to no factual data on Askeaton’s Pilgrim – besides his name (Don Martínez de Mendoza), his date of death (Askeaton, 1784), that he was a Barcelona merchant from the mid-18th Century who had a flagship called Isabella, and a daughter called Beatrice (Beatriz? Beatriu?) – we weren't able to find further evidence of his existence.
In May 2023, Irish artists Ruth Clinton & Niamh Moriarty presented their work as part of their two-week residency in Barcelona alongside project co-curators Michele Horrigan and Sean Lynch from Askeaton Contemporary Arts who discussed their programme through the publications they have produced since 2006.
During Clinton & Moriarty’s May visit to Barcelona, they were considering “spaces that share a historic Catholic faith; places and relics that are similarly ‘touched by celebrity’, or a dramatic, salacious story; journeys of personal discovery ... and fallen idols” and visited Montserrat Mountain and church, Christopher Columbus’s Monument on Les Rambles; the steps where Columbus was allegedly received by the Catholic Kings in Plaça del Rei, as well as the crypt where Santa Eulàlia (the co-patron of Barcelona) is entombed in the Catedral de la Santa Creu i Santa Eulàlia.
Niamh Moriarty rubbing the steps where Columbus was allegedly received by the Catholic Kings in Plaça del Rei, Barcelona. Photo: Ruth Clinton.
In late August 2023, the second cohort of pilgrims, aka the artist Eulàlia Rovira and project co-curators Latitudes, traveled to Dublin, Sligo, Askeaton, and Limerick. The diary was filled with activities: a visit to the Irish Architecture Archive and the “bog bodies” in Dublin’s National Museum; hikes to Carrowkeel Passage Tombs in Co. Sligo; a tour of the Holycross Abbey by stonemason Philip Quinn in Co. Tipperary; a tour of The Rock of Cashel and the Ardnacrusha Power Station in Co. Clare; a visit to the Flying Boat Museum and Maritime Museum in Foynes and Anthony Sheehy’s tour of Askeaton’s former Franciscan Friary in Co. Limerick; as well as the opening events of the 40th EVA International biennial in Limerick.
Eulàlia Rovira photographing the Ardnacrusha Power Station in Co. Clare.
→ More info here
→ Photos here
→ Social Media Archive here
→ Follow: #PilgrimAskeaton
“The Pilgrim” is supported by the Irish Arts Council’s International Residency Initiatives Scheme 2022.
RELATED CONTENTS:
- Audio The Pilgrim written by Tim Kelly and read by Carl Doran. Text published in Askeaton-Balysteen Community News, Summer 1984. Voice recorded in August 2018, 24'57''
- Cover Story, September 2023: The Pilgrim in Ireland, 6 September 2023
- Cover Story, May 2023: Ruth Clinton & Niamh Moriarty in Barcelona, May 1 2023
- Presentation by Ruth Clinton & Niamh Moriarty and Askeaton Contemporary Arts around “The Pilgrim” research, 6 May 2023 at 12 pm, May 1 2023
- Latitudes’ Newsletter, February 2022
