Threshold

Threshold 
2024
MDF, silk, natural dyes (cherry laurel, oak, birch), mordants, thread, wood, garden wire, bouquet cellophane
1300mm x 650mm x 300mm (plinth)
Installed in The Visitors, 2024. Leitrim Textured (Study No. 5) in background. Photograph by Ros Kavanagh courtesy of Butler Gallery.

Threshold (detail)
2024
MDF, silk, natural dyes (cherry laurel, oak, birch), mordants, thread, wood, garden wire, bouquet cellophane
1300mm x 650mm x 300mm (plinth)
Installed in The Visitors, 2024. Photograph by Ros Kavanagh courtesy of Butler Gallery.

Threshold (detail)
2024
MDF, silk, natural dyes (cherry laurel, oak, birch), mordants, thread, wood, garden wire, bouquet cellophane
1300mm x 650mm x 300mm (plinth)
Installed in The Visitors, 2024. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

Threshold (detail)
2024
MDF, silk, natural dyes (cherry laurel, oak, birch), mordants, thread, wood, garden wire, bouquet cellophane
1300mm x 650mm x 300mm (plinth)
Installed in The Visitors, 2024. Photograph by Ros Kavanagh courtesy of Butler Gallery.

The tiles of Threshold are reminiscent of both the entrance porch of a grand house and a contemporary suburban driveway – their colours drawn from Cherry laurel, one of the invasive species not legally recognised as such by the National Parks & Wildlife Service due to a lack of funding for a National Risk Assessment. Moreover, of the thirty-five invasive plant species that are included in the Third Schedule of the Habitats Directive, little can be done to prohibit their distribution because Article 50 has never been enacted. This means that Cherry laurel continues to be a widely available popular garden plant and grown on scale to supply the bouquet industry. Exhibited in front of a silk impression of a door in The Visitors at Butler Gallery, Threshold playfully but critically draws attention to the openings that allow invasive species to take hold. Slivers of naturally dyed silk and bouquet cellophane are formed around garden wire and a plant pot to make material connections with our everyday and unwitting complicity in creating the conditions for thresholds to be crossed and the spread of an invasive plant.