This work investigates the ideas of land memory and an urban/ rural divide, with a particular focus on Irish boglands, their current situation and their aesthetics.
A perceived permanence is at odds with undeniable man made evanescence. Year by year the bogs are being hacked away at and slowly fading, as are the traditions surrounding the harvesting of peat.
This project started through my curiosity surrounding the naturally occurring and manmade structures in Irish bogs. How cuts into the soft peat and pools of water in bogholes form rich and contradictory compositions. The materiality of paint describes the seepage between past and present. Bogs are containers of objects, people and place. They appear desolate and teeming with life. The land has memory.
If a landscape holds the trauma of its past, can we imagine a new landscape that is reflective of the violence and theft we have inflicted on it?
Butter Sunk Under
Étaín's Grave
Buried at Derraghan
Soft in the absence of sun
What she gave you, you squandered
Lady Atrophy
Colour Study 1
Colour Study 2
Colour Study 3