Domhan agus Domhan Eile (World and Otherworld) (2021/2022)
Certain places evoke for me a particular kind of imagining. Whether a consequence of the configuration of light and shadow, features of the topography, or the sounds (indeed the silences) in these places, I find myself more able to access a singular awareness. An awareness of the permanence and durability of the landscape, moulded over eons of geological time, but counterpointed with the relative impermanence and fragility of mankind’s existence on the planet. The climate crisis, environmental concerns related to the overconsumption and destruction of the Earth’s limited natural resources, the Coronavirus pandemic, the erosion of responsible governance, are all current existential threats. Such threats render the notion of our self annihilation as a species, at some time in the future, as something more than just science fiction.
In the locations which are the subjects of my images, the boundaries between my inner and outer worlds diminish. My images depict my imagined landscapes of a world where humanity is a memory. Forms, textures and colour merge and blur in the images. Foreground and background are confused and ephemerality is often present. They are unsettling to our normal means of quickly making sense of the visual. Yet the shapes and forms of the landscape remain identifiable, durable. In keeping with Freud’s unheimliche (the uncanny), the familiar is made strange. The real world and the imagined world coexist.
In Irish folklore there are tales told about the Aos Sí (commonly referred to in such tales as ‘the fairies’), magical beings who inhabited the world before the arrival of humanity and who subsequently retreated to live in the ‘otherworld’. The Aos Sí are said to resent humanity, and encounters with them are to be avoided. They inhabit fairy mounds (the remains of bronze age ringforts), lone trees, hedgerows, and the sea shore. The lore informs us that humans may encounter them when near their dwellings or when crossing the paths between them. Where they are encountered, it is said that the veil between the world and the otherworld is thin - just like the veil between the real world and my imagination in the locations where my images were captured. (see also AV)
