Mathew Bridge (billboard)
- When the city of Limerick began to expand in the 18th century, a new bridge was needed to connect King’s Island with the developing ‘new town’. The New Bridge was constructed, but soon it was insufficient to accommodate the traffic of the city, and so Mathew Bridge was built to replace it in 1844–46.
- The bridge was named after Fr. Theobald Mathew, a friar who launched a national temperance movement promoting complete abstinence from alcohol.
- This site was one of 12 listed venues for the 24th edition of EVA in 2000, curated by Rosa Martínez (b. 1955, Spain) and titled friends + neighbours. Charlene Teters (b. 1952, USA) presented a project called The River Remembers Us: We are People of the River – a performative walk, artist talk and a billboard.
- This work drew on the artist’s heritage and status as a citizen of the Spokane Nation. The billboard depicted an image of a historic photograph, Plateau people fishing in the Columbia River, alongside the text ‘The River Remembers Us: We are People of the River’, which was written in English for the first two weeks of the EVA exhibition, and then in Salish, the language of the Spokane people, for the last two weeks.
- Accompanying this billboard, the artist printed this same image and text in the Limerick Post in Spokane, English and Gaelic.
Edition
Artwork presented at this venue
Charlene Teters, The river remembers us: We are people of the river, 2000.
