Frank Sweeney
Location
- White Bay Power Station
Frank Sweeney is an artist with a research based practice, using found material to approach questions of collective memory, experience and identity through film and sound. This involves exploring the history of communications technologies through larger ideas such as historical materialism, cultural hegemony and imagined communities. In doing this, Sweeney’s work attempts to suggest points of departure from the social, political, and economic status quo. His work gives prominence to unofficial voices like folklore, social media and oral history interviews, allowing space for different subjectivities and contradictory perspectives; rejecting the idea that cinema can be truthful, conclusive or comprehensive.
Frank Sweeney
Born 1989, Dublin, Ireland
Lives and works in Dublin, Ireland
Go Ye Afar 2026
single channel video, pro res 422, stereo sound, looped 24 mins
Presentation at the 25th Biennale of Sydney was made possible with generous support from Culture Ireland. Originally commissioned by The Arts Council of Ireland & Temple Bar Gallery + Studios
Courtesy of the artist
Moving between dream and documentary, memory and archive, Frank Sweeney’s Go Ye Afar explores the role of broadcast media in sustaining communities across geographies and generations. Following a taxi driver on a surreal voyage through the streets of Dublin (Ireland) and Calabar (Nigeria), Go Ye Afar conjures memories of Ireland’s economic crash in the 2010s; protests against foreign multinationals; the stories of Catholic missionaries; and NGOs working in Nigeria throughout the 1900s.
Grounded in oral history interviews with Irish-Nigerian taxi drivers, missionaries who lived in both Ireland and Nigeria, in addition to a broad collection of archival footage, the film celebrates Ireland’s solidarity with the Biafran independence struggle (known as the first televised famine). Using a range of Nollywood-inspired (Nigerian Hollywood) special effects Go Ye Afar questions notions of identity, global north-south relations and the structural causes of post-colonial migration and inequality.