Cleeve’s Condensed Milk Factory

Formerly known as Lansdowne Flax Mill, Cleeves Factory

O’Callaghan Strand, LimerickGoogle Maps

Originally built in 1854 as the Lansdowne spinning and weaving factory for John Russell Norris, this building was later acquired by the Cleeve brothers from Canada. It became Cleeve’s Condensed Milk Factory, the largest milk processing plant in Ireland.
Cleeve’s was a huge source of employment for workers and farmers in the region, and at its peak in the early 20th century was producing 60,000 tins of condensed milk a day, with 10,000 cows providing the raw material. Its decline and eventual closure in the mid 1980s contributed to high local unemployment.
Cleeve’s is due to be redeveloped as Cleeves Riverside Quarter by Limerick 2030 – the development company established by Limerick City and County Council.
This site was one of six listed venues for the 38th edition of EVA in 2018, curated by Inti Guerrero (b. 1983, Colombia).
That year, Sanja Iveković (b. 1949, Croatia) presented Lady Rosa of Luxembourg (2001), a reimagining of the Gëlle Fra (Golden Lady) statue of Nike in the city centre of Luxembourg, which was unveiled in 1923 in memory of volunteers who fought with the Allies in the First World War.
Iveković’s version of the statue, which was created for Casino Luxembourg and the Musée d’Histoire de la Ville de Luxembourg, was instead dedicated to the Marxist philosopher and activist Rosa Luxemburg, who was executed for her radical political ideas in 1919. In further adaptations from the original, the golden figure of Nike was visibly pregnant, and the plaque honouring male heroism was replaced with words such as ‘resistance’, ‘justice’, kitsch’, ‘capital’, ‘art’, ‘whore’, ‘virgin’, and so on. The work renegotiated the purpose of the memorial by questioning the conventions of social remembrance and insisting on justice for women’s position in society.
Artist and writer Adrian Duncan speaks with Dr. Sarah O’Brien about the development and process of making The Soil Became Scandinavian (2018), an artwork he developed with filmmaker Feargal Ward for the 38th EVA International, curated by Inti Guerrero.