Ireland\u2019s artist at the Venice Biennale steals religious imagery for her secular celebrations of scientists and humanists, including an Italian punctuation master \u2013 and even TV\u2019s famous mobster<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a long way to the Irish pavilion at the Venice Biennale. First, you pass through the biennale\u2019s colossal central exhibition, housed in a sequence of cavernous medieval warehouses. After that, the route takes in a suite of national pavilions (the Philippines, Latvia, Timor-Leste, Morocco, Malta, Oman). By the time art-lovers reach Ireland\u2019s presentation, they are frequently exhausted, if not delirious.<\/p>\n
This year, Dublin-based artist Isabel Nolan has transformed the pavilion into a space of respite, both physical and intellectual \u2013 a secular chapel titled Dreamshook. Visitors emerge from darkness into a pale-yellow chamber flooded with daylight and face a radiant tapestry arched like a stained-glass window in a gothic cathedral. A cluster of archangel\u2019s wings bearing books hovers before the vast orb of the sun above a fish-filled sea. Nolan works across sculpture, textile, painting, drawing and text, and Dreamshook is accordingly rich in colour and pictorial detail, including bent metal sculptures, tapestries and drawings. For the footsore and weary \u2013 ie everyone \u2013 she has even designed benches. Glory be.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/7208a68b19b2b268a494ab4a8c59d478ca761946\/211_0_3379_2704\/master\/3379.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=26ae7ee2c160413743d2e846892023ae\" "\\"Copernicus!")
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