Installed in The Visitors at Butler Gallery, documented at the beginning of the exhibition run. Photograph by Ros Kavanagh courtesy of Butler Gallery.
Installed in The Visitors at Butler Gallery, documented at the beginning of the exhibition run. Photograph by Ros Kavanagh courtesy of Butler Gallery.
Installed in The Visitors at Butler Gallery, documented at the beginning of the exhibition run. Photographs b Ros Kavanagh courtesy of Butler Gallery.
Installed in The Visitors at Butler Gallery, documented at the beginning of the exhibition run. Photograph by Ros Kavanagh courtesy of Butler Gallery.
Installed in The Visitors, documented at the end of the exhibition run. Photograph courtesy of the artist.
Installed in The Visitors, documented at the end of the exhibition run. Photograph courtesy of the artist.
Façade
2024
debris netting, reclaimed silk curtains, ivy dye, mordants
5500mm x 5000mm
Inspired by the ivy-clad fronts of ruins and scientific prediction that the evergreen will prevail over deciduous plants in the grip of climate change, Façade floats like an emblematic tipping point. Debris netting – a material of both exclusion and protection, urban renewal and ruin – forms a lace-like net curtain, embellished with ‘leaves’ made from reclaimed curtains dyed with ivy collected from walls and trees toppled in storms. Ivy embodies similar duality – a ubiquitous underminer of walls and trees yet, at some point, an essential stabiliser of their rotting remains. During the exhibition run of The Visitors at Butler Gallery, I added more silk leaves dyed with ivy harvested in the wake of storms. These additions were evident both on the netting and in the shadows cast on the gallery floor. This is an ongoing work with more silk leaves added for subsequent shows, their colours given by the dye pots gleaned from future storms.
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.