Here, the Queer, Appear - City Hall, Culture Night 2026
Activation of our 857 lights, representing 857 self-nominated LGBTQI+ community members, Culture Night
For Culture Night - September 18, 2026, Cork City Council commissioned us to bring our lights, and our presence, to City Hall. Our 857 lights winked on the riverside (north) facade of the building. This resonated with Cork LGBT Archive’s ‘We Were Always Here’ exhibition, permanently installed in 2026 at the City Museum, through a queered activation of the monument commemorating the 800th year of the charter of the City of Cork. Our presence glowed forth in its visual rhythms: a community together, yet each pulse individual, moving in and out of sync with each other.
For Here, the Queer, Appear, Culture Night 2026: our 857 lights, each one representing a self-nominated member of the LGBTQI+ community of Cork, were installed on the Riverside facade of Cork City Hall around the existing green illumination. Commissioned by the Arts Office of the Council, this represented a move of the representation of part of the mass of our community to the centre of civic government.
Alongside this, as the sun set, in the early evening, Moss Russell (they); Jude O’Neill (they); and Abra Kedavre (they) activated Cork’s monument to 800 years since its Norman charter with our queer presence in the early evening by posing and holding banners. The banners were a tribute to Cork City Council’s permanent installation of an exhibition by the Cork LGBT Archive at the City Museum earlier in August: entitled We Were Always Here (because, indeed, we were, for all 800 years). Banner design and banner use was courtesy the Archive and Orla Egan and designer Darren O’Connor.
Many thanks to Public Art Manager Valerie Byrne for all her help and assistance, and the Arts Team at the Council led by Michelle Carew. Thank you to the Arts Council, Gay Project, Circus Factory and UCC who supported the first iterations of the project.