This month Latitudes welcomes artists Ruth Clinton & Niamh Moriarty to Barcelona as part of the pilot residency exchange project The Pilgrim. Ruth & Niamh will be talking about their work in Barcelona on 6 May, alongside project co-curators Michele Horrigan and Sean Lynch of Askeaton Contemporary Arts, in an event hosted at Eulàlia Rovira’s studio.

Ruth and Niamh’s recent work forms a kind of cautionary tale about the romantic myths surrounding their native Ireland, its landscape, identity, and adoption of American tropes of the frontier, while trying to catalyse possibilities for contemporary folklore. Their collaborative practice combines intricate storytelling with film and exhibition making, incorporating radio works, publications, performances, historical research and conspiracy theories to reflect on the contradictions of heritage marketing and environmental policies, the colonial relations of the past, and the protest movements of the present. This month’s cover story is a still from In a Contrary Place (2022) a film which adopts the form of an immram, a hero’s journey to an otherworld.

While the duo are in Catalonia they’ll be “tracing ideas of Pilgrimage; places that have been ‘touched by celebrity’ or an enduring, dramatic story; journeys of personal discovery (e.g. the popularity of home DNA tests and and how these reflect mounting unease around authenticity, origin and national identity), ideas of sanctuary through shared faith, and of course, fallen idols.”