SPOKEN STATE - IRELAND
Proclamation of the Irish Republic
The Provisional Government of the Irish Republic · 1916
The Work
MEDIUM
Acrylic on Dibond aluminium
DIMENSIONS
915 × 457 mm (1:2 ratio)
COLOURS
Cadmium Green (Hue), Cadmium Orange Hue 9085, Titanium White
SPEECH
Proclamation of the Irish Republic, 1916
SPEAKER
Patrick Pearse
LOCATION
GPO, Dublin
About the flag
The Irish Tricolour — green (nationalism), white (peace), orange (unionism) — in a ratio of 1:2
Historical Context
The moment: Easter Rising, April 24, 1916
By 1916 Ireland had been under British rule for over 700 years. The Home Rule Bill of 1914 had been suspended on the outbreak of World War I, and a small group of republican leaders decided armed revolt was the only path to independence.
On Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, approximately 1,200 Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army members seized key buildings across Dublin. Patrick Pearse read the Proclamation from the steps of the GPO, declaring an Irish Republic and appealing to Ireland's dead generations and her exiled children abroad.
The Rising was suppressed within six days. Fifteen leaders were executed by firing squad between May 3–12, 1916 — a decision that transformed public opinion and set Ireland on the path to independence. The War of Independence followed (1919–21), then the Anglo-Irish Treaty and eventual establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922.
The Proclamation remains the founding document of modern Ireland. Its language — invoking civil and religious liberty, equal rights and opportunities for all citizens — was radical for its time and still resonates in contemporary debates about Irish identity.
The Speech
"We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people."
Context
Read aloud by Patrick Pearse at the GPO, Dublin, Easter Monday, April 24, 1916. Signed by seven men: Thomas Clarke, Seán Mac Diarmada, Thomas MacDonagh, Patrick Pearse, Éamonn Ceannt, James Connolly, and Joseph Plunkett. All seven were executed within three weeks.
1916 Proclamation - Read by various citizens
1916 Easter Rising: The Poet’s Rebellion
Politicising Pearse - the making of an Irish Revolutionary
Process
Each Spoken State work begins with the speech. The text is transcribed, counted, and mapped to the geometry of the flag — word by word, colour field by colour field — before a single brushstroke is made.
1. The Aluminium Dibond is sized to the width of McGinty’s 30 year old T Square. The surface is lightly sanded, primed and 4 coats of gesso with a final two coats of Titanium White to create the the surface on which to work. The Surface becomes a drawing board.
2. Using a T-Square and pencil the complete Proclamation text (470 words) is mapped word by word in pencil across the three colour fields of the Irish Tricolour.Word size, spacing, and density were calibrated so the text reads as pure colour field at distance, resolving into language only on close approach.
3. Each stripe — green, white, and orange — required precise colour matching. The orange stripe is revised and corrected to Cadmium Orange Hue 9085 to achieve the correct warmth and opacity over the aluminium ground.
4. Golden High Flow Acrylics is applied to Dibond aluminium at 915mm width, maintaining the official 1:2 flag ratio.
Limited Edition Prints
The Original Flag Painting is scanned using a museum quality, high resolution Cruse scanner.
Limited edition museum quality archival prints are available, signed and numbered by the artist.
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