The Sunday Tribune

One day, ten years ago, architect John Tuomey crossed George's Street in Dublin to introduce himself to the artist Gerard Mannix Flynn. It was the beginning of a journey that would end with Mannix Flynn performing at the opening of the Irish Pavilion at the 9th Architecture Biennale in Venice an excerpt from his show, James X . . . Inviting a performance artist to open the project felt like the rounding of a circle, the embryonic process of one art form merging with the other . . . In the Irish Pavilion, there is an urge to touch the wood, to sift through the sand in the Scary House, to feel the structures as sensuous objects that speak to us on an almost instinctual level, rather than a purely intellectual one.