Queer Ecology
Is the observation and interpretation of ecosystems while actively rejecting the colonial structuring and presumptions of heteronormativity that have marked the European study of ecology over the past few centuries.
Homo Sum
Following a period of meditation on the potential for humanity to build in and with nature rather than on or despite it, this piece is a collage of photography mostly taken around Cork.
Along with being a very literal imagining of what humanity could achieve with alternate perspectives on ecology, this piece embodies a reflection of our inner sense of self by using textures and details to highlight functionality of mental and somatic facilities.
The lighthouse casts a beam of light on to a world we’re perhaps more familiar with, a crowded cityscape, a projection of fear and scarcity mindset.
A Night time version of the same concept.
Again playing with textures and halftones to delineate between a sense of Self - protected, healthy, vulnerable - and projections of fear. Up and Down exist, but top, bottom and horizon are absent - seeking certainty within rather than depending on external markers.
Aiséirí Bhríghide
Aiséirí Bhríghide - the Resurrection of Brigid
Alternate perspectives on the natural world are finding their way back into our understanding. A photograph taken one Imbolc eve of sheep on a mountain near Ballingeary in West Cork inspired this reflective piece honouring Brigid, a sapphic feminist icon in the canon of Irish deities. Her feast has been resurrected as an official calendar date in recent years, which a group of artists and I have taken measures to celebrate through Imbolg and Ab.
The sheep are bestowed an identity by spray painting their wool, something we do to our own children when, or before, they’re born. Brigid as a saint has been assigned a patronage of animal husbandry, something I feel is at odds with the spirit of the original deity - a fertility goddess of fire and rebirth.
There is an unspoken debate underpinning the resurrection of Brigid - who is it we are in fact celebrating? Even if celebrations are focussed solely on the saint, versions of her are very divergent - a fierce leader and cult idol of a church in early Christian Ireland at a time when women were in leadership roles as often as anybody else… or a silent sufferer, cursed to a life of evangelising the savage Gael.
Publius
Made of discarded 20th century materials gathered on an urban nature hike of Cork City, this piece re-imagines the crest of the city using coded signifiers that will bear meaning to Corkonians.
The quote: Is Duine Mé, Faic Daonna Coimhthíoch Dom, from the Latin: Homo Sum, Humani Nihil Alienum Puto or in English: I am Human, Nothing Human can be Alien to Me is by Terrence, a formerly enslaved Afro-Roman playwright who frequently mused on the value and worth of the human being in relation to others.