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'something permanent' (for Eileen Gray)
a poem by Alice Lyons (2013)
Performed and distributed in various iterations by commissioning artist Sarah Browne, as part of an ongoing
work, “Remembering Gray” on noted Irish architect/designer Eileen Gray (19781976).
The proceeds from the sale of the book by Sarah Browne, From Margin to Margin (Looking for
Eileen), have been treated as a fund ‘to be used in the service of the memory of Eileen Gray’.
For ‘Remembering Gray,’ the artist completes this selfassigned contract by commissioning a poem from poet Alice Lyons.
The poem exists in lieu of any formal eulogy or obituary for Gray, but also as a piece of Lyons’s own work, with its own integrity.
It is intended to have a performative potential and the capacity for distribution in multiple forms, all extending from an
initial translation into Morse code—a form of minimal communication that shares qualities of
invisibility and secrecy resonant with Gray’s practice.
One transmission of this work is carried out through a temporary shortwave radio station in the
Irish Museum of Modern Art (call sign EI2EEN) from October 2013 until April 2014, in
collaboration with the South Eastern Amateur Radio Group, Ireland. A version in the Grazer
Kunstverein, Graz, Austria, also intervenes in the built fabric of the institution, where the flickers
of a tube light signal Gray’s memorial.