Climber
2024
polypropylene rope, wool, birch and ivy dye, mordants
400mm x 500mm, dimensions variable
Installed in The Visitors at Butler Gallery, 2024. Photographs by Ros Kavanagh courtesy of Butler Gallery.
Reflecting on the reputation of ivy to take over and undermine trees, Climber clads the blue polypropylene rope commonly used in the forestry industry with wool dyed using birch bark and ivy harvested from toppled trees and walls in the wake of storms. A gradient of colours was achieved over the single length of rope by exhausting dye pots to give continuously lighter shades of wool, then using mordant afterbaths to adjust these colours, followed by a process of careful grading.
The Visitors was developed thanks to the generous support of an Arts Council Visual Arts Bursary Award 2024, a Galway City Council Creative Practitioner Bursary 2024, and through a yearlong collaboration with Kunstverein Aughrim in 2024.