Exhibition Text
Isabel Nolan
Dreamshook
Isabel Nolan
Dreamshook
The word Dreamshook1 describes the feeling of waking from a dream, when reality is destabilised and realms of possibility linger and dissipate. In the Irish Pavilion, Nolan’s exhibition of hand-tufted tapestry, drawing, and sculpture, represents thresholds, dream states, and narratives that strain the distinctions between the immaterial and the actual. The work develops from her sustained fascination with the human desire to find meaning or order in the universe, and the frameworks that shape our understanding of the world.
Nolan looks to the Middle Ages and early Renaissance as an era that resonates with now. It was a turbulent period marked by religious and political upheaval, a time transformed by plague, wars, and famine. Cultural and technological developments in Europe cultivated profound ideological change, challenged the nature of authority, and reshaped what it might mean to be human. The work draws on artefacts and ideas from those formative times that helped pattern the present-day: from the emergence of humanism and dramatic developments in Italian painting and architecture, to the invention of the printing press and the use of moveable type in Europe.
Nolan focuses on the figure of Aldo Manuzio (c.1450–1515), an innovative, influential printer and publisher based in Venice. As the century turned, Manuzio, widely known as Aldus Manutius, transformed the culture of reading in small and large ways: introducing the semi-colon and italics; and more significantly producing numerous, portable enchiridion (pocket-sized books), beautifully designed with wide margins and modern typography. In his promotion of key writings by influential contemporary humanists and numerous Greek and Roman classical works – newly, conscientiously edited and never before published in Europe – he hoped to champion the idea of human perfectibility and foster a more ‘civilised’ world.
The story of Manuzio’s ambitions to publish “a plentiful supply of books,” and the ways in which dreams and abstract ideas can shape and tax reality, are at the heart of this exhibition. Nolan invokes these histories to signal how the architectures of belief and knowledge we inhabit often stretch the limits of credibility. Drawing on literature, history, religion, and mythology, the works ground far-reaching subjects in intimate, material encounters, exploring how meaning and connection are forged in the turmoil of the present day. Dreamshook invites speculation on how the dynamics of wonder, belief, and power shape both expectations and human experience, and how we encounter the world in all its messiness and debatable beauty.
Even if there is much to be appreciated about it, it can be tricky to love a European heritage. It’s a place that wielded privilege as a weapon and progressively built wealth and culture through extraction and subjugation; a lesson quickly learnt growing up in Ireland. But there is much within the cultural history of post-medieval Europe, albeit produced and shaped almost exclusively by and for a wealthy, white, Christian patriarchal society, that I still love and learn from. There’s a Goya aquatint called The sleep of reason produces monsters. While reading into the history of humanism which birthed generous ideas and a remarkable legacy I recalled this work, mindful that the dreams and desires of reason also produced horrors.
Dreamshook might be a show about ambivalence, about the literature and art of western Judaeo-Christian, Classically-inflected, enlightened society, that I both hate and love. What it means and what it entails to be human, or even humane, is being tested. It feels timely to look at a period when some of what we have taken for granted about being ‘modern’ humans for 600 plus years is subject to new pressures and potentially revolutionary change.
Nolan looks to the Middle Ages and early Renaissance as an era that resonates with now. It was a turbulent period marked by religious and political upheaval, a time transformed by plague, wars, and famine. Cultural and technological developments in Europe cultivated profound ideological change, challenged the nature of authority, and reshaped what it might mean to be human. The work draws on artefacts and ideas from those formative times that helped pattern the present-day: from the emergence of humanism and dramatic developments in Italian painting and architecture, to the invention of the printing press and the use of moveable type in Europe.
Nolan focuses on the figure of Aldo Manuzio (c.1450–1515), an innovative, influential printer and publisher based in Venice. As the century turned, Manuzio, widely known as Aldus Manutius, transformed the culture of reading in small and large ways: introducing the semi-colon and italics; and more significantly producing numerous, portable enchiridion (pocket-sized books), beautifully designed with wide margins and modern typography. In his promotion of key writings by influential contemporary humanists and numerous Greek and Roman classical works – newly, conscientiously edited and never before published in Europe – he hoped to champion the idea of human perfectibility and foster a more ‘civilised’ world.
The story of Manuzio’s ambitions to publish “a plentiful supply of books,” and the ways in which dreams and abstract ideas can shape and tax reality, are at the heart of this exhibition. Nolan invokes these histories to signal how the architectures of belief and knowledge we inhabit often stretch the limits of credibility. Drawing on literature, history, religion, and mythology, the works ground far-reaching subjects in intimate, material encounters, exploring how meaning and connection are forged in the turmoil of the present day. Dreamshook invites speculation on how the dynamics of wonder, belief, and power shape both expectations and human experience, and how we encounter the world in all its messiness and debatable beauty.
Even if there is much to be appreciated about it, it can be tricky to love a European heritage. It’s a place that wielded privilege as a weapon and progressively built wealth and culture through extraction and subjugation; a lesson quickly learnt growing up in Ireland. But there is much within the cultural history of post-medieval Europe, albeit produced and shaped almost exclusively by and for a wealthy, white, Christian patriarchal society, that I still love and learn from. There’s a Goya aquatint called The sleep of reason produces monsters. While reading into the history of humanism which birthed generous ideas and a remarkable legacy I recalled this work, mindful that the dreams and desires of reason also produced horrors.
Dreamshook might be a show about ambivalence, about the literature and art of western Judaeo-Christian, Classically-inflected, enlightened society, that I both hate and love. What it means and what it entails to be human, or even humane, is being tested. It feels timely to look at a period when some of what we have taken for granted about being ‘modern’ humans for 600 plus years is subject to new pressures and potentially revolutionary change.
– Isabel Nolan
Dreamshook is a dazzling new body of work that invites visitors into a materialised dream state where hierarchies and expectation collapse. Unfolding from Manuzio’s dream inviting us to pick up books rather than arms, the work weaves moments of hope and societal change amidst crisis; histories that resonate strongly with our own time. In her singular practice with vibrant colour and texture, Nolan prompts us to find some hope in the face of indifference, and to seek connection in this complex world we’ve made.
1 The word “dreamshook” was coined by Nolan in 2017.
Pavilion of Ireland at the 61st International Art Exhibition
– LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA
– LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA
ISABEL NOLAN
DREAMSHOOK
DREAMSHOOK
9 MAY — 22 NOVEMBER 2026
Commissioned by CULTURE IRELAND
Curated by GEORGINA JACKSON with THE DOUGLAS HYDE