Mutual Taming (2023)
Steel, bio resin, moss, stone, concrete, dimensions vary.
Sculptural works reference the disassembling of a greenhouse façade and elude to ancient neolithic standing stones and dolmens, while rusted patina and disintegrating bioresin, moss and concrete reference architectural and industrial ingenuitiy and arrogance. Using motifs of containment, control and prediction, the works suspends the viewer in alternate temporalities of life on earth, exploring the elements, minerals, animal and plant life, the preservation of information in permafrost and glaciers and the theory of the first land plant, an ancient moss that migrated from water to land. The work explores human and non-human methods of extraction, attempting to decipher historical narratives by disassembling the concept of ephemerality, colliding relics of culture, forms in the landscape and material processes – a past, present and future melted, crystallised, eroded, corroded, calcified and deposited. Inspired by the rock and hydrological cycles, the work asks without a cohesive timeline, what is our relationship to the earth around us?
A Future Distant Memory Calls extracts moments of time and myth, notions of progress and explores materiality within the physical landscape to illustrate the impact agriculture, colonialism, architecture, climate and the quest for knowledge has had on the relationship of the human and non-human, of nature and technology, and of culture and science.
These works were presented at Roscommon Arts Centre in 2023.
Image credits: Laura Skehan and Graham Coogan