Left: false start, illegal formation, encroachment offence (2025). Birch wood, vinyl [115 x 183 x 63 cm]. Right: podiums suddenly became toppled platforms for the counter-monuments of resistance (2025). Birch wood, aluminium tread plate, gum shield, archival images, carabiner, paper, trophy, enamel pins, Pocari Sweat, runner, 10 All-Ireland medals, All-Ireland medal ribbon. Photograph by Aisling Clark.
false start, illegal formation, encroachment offence (2025). Birch wood, vinyl [115 x 183 x 63 cm]. Photograph by Aisling Clark.
false start, illegal formation, encroachment offence (2025) [detail]. Birch wood, vinyl [115 x 183 x 63 cm]. Photograph by Aisling Clark.
false start, illegal formation, encroachment offence (2025) [detail]. Birch wood, vinyl [115 x 183 x 63 cm]. Photograph by Aisling Clark.
illusion of defence (2025) [detail]. Sports zip jacket, birch wood, aluminium tread plate, 34 Waterford Athletics medals [173 x 1.5 x 72.5 cm]. Photo by Tom Flanagan.
illusion of defence (2025) [detail]. Sports zip jacket, birch wood, aluminium tread plate, 34 Waterford Athletics medals [173 x 1.5 x 72.5 cm]. Photo by Tom Flanagan.
false start, illegal formation, encroachment offence (2025)
Multimedia installation
False Start
Léann Herlihy grew up in rural Waterford and has exhibited across Ireland and internationally. This exhibition sees Herlihy return home to present work in county Waterford for the first time. At GOMA, three new installation artworks from their ongoing long-term project, With Everything We’ve Got! unpack their artistic research and respond to the setting of Waterford. Developed through site visits to local athletic tracks and sports centres, podiums suddenly became toppled platforms for the counter-monuments of resistance (2025), brings together materials from the artist’s own athletic career with elements from the Sports and Leisure Collection at the Canadian Museum of History, as well as the Leather and Fetish Archive at Bishopsgate Institute.
The first iteration of this expansive body of work, the performance With Everything We’ve Got! [warm-up], took place at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios in September 2023, during which the artist repeatedly fell as an embodied response to systemic injustice; a refusal to situate themself in relation to a destination, a final form, or an established configuration of desire and/or identity. With Everything We’ve Got! is generative rather than critical of existing systems, urging us to move forward collectively. Anti-climactic in nature, Herlihy’s project is about building capacity rather than a singular competition that is lost or won.¹
¹ Extract from exhibition text written by curator, Aisling Clark.
false start, illegal formationk encroachment offence (2025) is part of Herlihy’s larger transdisciplinary project With Everything We’ve Got! (2022 - ?) and was commissioned by GOMA’s Emerging Curator 2025, Aisling Clark as part of the two person exhibition False Start
Multimedia installation
False Start
Léann Herlihy grew up in rural Waterford and has exhibited across Ireland and internationally. This exhibition sees Herlihy return home to present work in county Waterford for the first time. At GOMA, three new installation artworks from their ongoing long-term project, With Everything We’ve Got! unpack their artistic research and respond to the setting of Waterford. Developed through site visits to local athletic tracks and sports centres, podiums suddenly became toppled platforms for the counter-monuments of resistance (2025), brings together materials from the artist’s own athletic career with elements from the Sports and Leisure Collection at the Canadian Museum of History, as well as the Leather and Fetish Archive at Bishopsgate Institute.
The first iteration of this expansive body of work, the performance With Everything We’ve Got! [warm-up], took place at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios in September 2023, during which the artist repeatedly fell as an embodied response to systemic injustice; a refusal to situate themself in relation to a destination, a final form, or an established configuration of desire and/or identity. With Everything We’ve Got! is generative rather than critical of existing systems, urging us to move forward collectively. Anti-climactic in nature, Herlihy’s project is about building capacity rather than a singular competition that is lost or won.¹
¹ Extract from exhibition text written by curator, Aisling Clark.
false start, illegal formationk encroachment offence (2025) is part of Herlihy’s larger transdisciplinary project With Everything We’ve Got! (2022 - ?) and was commissioned by GOMA’s Emerging Curator 2025, Aisling Clark as part of the two person exhibition False Start