A Taxi Journey Through Dublin and Calabar in Frank Sweeney’s Film

Go Ye Afar (2025), the latest video work by Irish artist Frank Sweeney, opens with a shot of a taxi on the mountains overlooking Dublin, lights full beam on a statue of a saint draped in rosary beads. The film follows an Irish Nigerian taxi driver on the night shift, his car weaving through eerie rural roads and eventually a matrix of urban underpasses as the metre ticks upwards. The streets of Dublin blur with those of Calabar, southern Nigeria, in a haunting dream tapestry of vivid visual textures and magical realism where here bleeds into there, the present into the past. 

Radio waves permeate the boundary between the cab and the outside world through the low drone of commentators. The car is breached, too, by the entry of each new passenger. The first of these is a husband and wife our driver collects from the airport, who quickly prove to be representative of a particular style of Western condescension; on the phone in the back seat, the woman speaks about the months they spent volunteering in Africa (‘We were really moved by what we saw’), all privilege and blithe pity. 

It is fitting that this new work, which is concerned with globalization and the politics of movement, is on view at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios: the exhibition space in that most touristic, hyperreal of Dublin’s districts. In front of the building, small groups of visitors in anoraks straggle along the lanes, wiping rain from their camera lenses; pub speakers blast out the Ed Sheeran song ‘Galway Girl’ (2017); a man dressed as a Cornish pasty advertises a nearby takeaway. Inside, as outside, the city is simulacrum. Repurposed minibus seats facing the screen are arranged in rows, seatbelts dangling. Immediately, the viewer – along for the ride – is implicated in the economy the film explores. 

As the film continues, we encounter a jaded priest and a wide-eyed young traveller. But if we expect a series of straightforward character sketches – each passenger standing in for some discernible archetype – Sweeney wrong-foots us, preventing neat interpretations. A view of Dublin’s docklands, glimpsed from the passenger window, dissolves: suddenly, the car is bobbing along the River Liffey, carried out into the violent, rolling Irish Sea. The scene gives way again, to archival footage from the Nigerian Civil War. The cab becomes a transnational vessel, a vector through which the forces of history operate. Subsequent archival footage evokes Shannon Airport – a stopover for the US military – cutting to film from Mayo protests against Shell, thereby further widening the scope of the film’s investigation.

Of primary interest to Sweeney, however, is the relationship between Ireland and Nigeria, specifically the legacy of Catholic missionaries. The car is subtly adorned with religious paraphernalia, and what unfolds is a quasi-religious vision – disquieting and, in places, gently humorous thanks to its mounting absurdity. The taxi – one moment in Ireland, the next detouring into Nigeria – reveals a popped bonnet from which blood appears to be leaking, before the vehicle ascends into the clouds. We alight back in Dublin, the cab broken down. Its driver, impassive, walks off along the quays past docked tall ships, eventually stepping onto a Dublin bus and leaving his taxi behind. 

Maybe it is inevitable that a short film with so many narrative threads should lack resolution. Nevertheless, Sweeney manages to conjure a lingering feeling of unease in the viewer, forcing us to reflect on how we move through space and the factors that steer our course. Leaving the cavernous darkness of the gallery, we re-emerge into a city in motion, confronted with the restlessness of trade and the bustle of cobbled walkways. Beyond, Dublin taxis continue gliding through the streets. 

Frank Sweeney’s ‘Go Ye Afar’ is at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin, until 23 November 

^{Main image: Frank Sweeney, Go Ye Afar, 2025, film still. Courtesy: the artist and Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin}