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Formerly known as Limerick Institution, Cummins Gallery

99 O’Connell St, LimerickGoogle Maps

This red-brick Georgian townhouse, built in the early 19th century, was formerly a gentlemen’s club called the Limerick Institution, as well as a commercial gallery called Cummins Gallery, which hosted the first edition of EVA, then known as ‘77 Exhibition of Visual Arts’.
It was also where William Roche (b. 1775, Ireland; d. 1850), a successful businessman in the 19th century, had a bank as well as his own residence and terraced gardens. Roche incorporated a sophisticated system of irrigation in his gardens, which were known as The Hanging Gardens. He built stone vaults and topped them with gardens which grew exotic fruits such as pineapples, oranges and peaches.
This history of the building was the basis for a work titled Limerick Action No.2 presented at this site by artist Sean Lynch (b. 1978, Ireland) for the 27th edition of EVA in 2003, curated by Virginia Pérez-Ratton (b. 1950, Costa Rica).
The work featured a selection of historical documents depicting drawings of Roche’s Hanging Gardens, displayed on the exterior of the site where they once existed in the 19th century, along O’Connell Street and Henry Street.
In the artist’s own words: ‘By exposing the existence of Roche’s Hanging Gardens to a larger audience, I hope a perspective is evoked that shows the immense possibilities of the built environment, even in quite a peripheral location such as Limerick, and I question why Limerick’s architecture today often denies itself that function.’