Understory (foreground) installed in The Visitors at Butler Gallery, 2024. Photograph by Ros Kavanagh courtesy of Butler Gallery.
Understory (foreground) installed in The Visitors at Butler Gallery, 2024. Photograph by Ros Kavanagh courtesy of Butler Gallery.
Understory (detail) installed in The Visitors at Butler Gallery, 2024. Photograph by Ros Kavanagh courtesy of Butler Gallery.
Understory (detail) installed in The Visitors at Butler Gallery, 2024. Photograph by Ros Kavanagh courtesy of Butler Gallery.
Understory (detail) installed in The Visitors at Butler Gallery, 2024. Photograph by Ros Kavanagh courtesy of Butler Gallery.
Understory (detail) installed in The Visitors at Butler Gallery, 2024. Photograph by Ros Kavanagh courtesy of Butler Gallery.
Experiment with light I (developmental work for Understory). wool, linen, oak and rhododendron dye, mordants, cyanotype print, oak gall ink, iron
Installed at Leitrim Sculpture Centre for the LEER Residency exhibition 2024. Photograph by Louis Haugh.
Understory
2024
wool, linen, silk, woodland dyes (oak, birch, ivy, cherry laurel, laurel, rhododendron, bracken), mordants, cyanotype print, oak gall ink, iron, ivy vine, ESB ducting coupler, newsprint, graphite, wood, MDF, ink, wood stain, wood dye, polish
1800mm x 500mm x 400mm (plinth)
Translating the competition for light in a forest, Understory employs natural dyes made from forest-dwelling plants reputed to dominate. A weaving made from wool dyed with oak and rhododendron was used to make a cyanotype, which was then modified with oak gall ink, then pasted to a dowel. These sit on a bed of wooden tiles along with a polished ivy vine and a decoupaged ESB ducting coupler, normally used to join the red ducting arches that mark entrances to clear-fell sites. Altar-like, it’s sides are clad in graphite rubbings – the woodgrain effect lifted from a mass-produced fibrewood door, a product of Ireland’s forestry industry.
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.