Michael Holly and Mieke Vanmechelen
Lily of the Valley

Michael Holly’s Lily of the Valley explores the life and creations of Flemish-Irish artist Lily Van Oost (1932–97), who from her studio in Kerry’s Black Valley produced an esoteric body of artworks evoking the intrinsic relationship between sculpture, inhabitation and nature. Reassessing Van Oost’s work today, Holly’s video delves deep into the memories, documents and artworks that today remain of her legacy, produced in collaboration with Mieke Vanmechelen.

In an upcoming ACA PUBLIC book, curator Jes Fernie quotes Van Oost; ‘Yggdrasil, the legendary tree of life: nature gives, while we thieve away. We, humanoids, mount monsters in ourselves. We despise, we destroy what is not our heritage. Animals, vegetables, stones, the earth; they do not belong to us. No humanoid belongs to another. If we feel such a superior species, we must care for all others, for all other species… for all things; humanoid, animal, vegetable, rocks, the Earth symbol…’