2017 Solo at Leitrim Sculpture Centre
2018 Artworks at Carlow Visual
The Museum of Mythological Water Beasts at Ormston House
Implicit in my work is the idea that water is an element deserving much greater consideration than it is currently given. My work explores water memory and waters’ potential. I use methods of serial dilution in order to release the stories and potential from the waters. I wish to open up the landscape to different ways of interpretation and exploration of ways of being – there are multiple and competing interpretations afloat in the world.
My water remedy work has transformative powers, which subvert determined physical structures by inviting a growing
awareness of the imperceptible and temporal forces that surround distillations of an ephemeral environment and bring them together within a poetic immediacy that underlines the paradoxical nature of water.
This water work I have been immersed in for the past number of years has brought me on quite a journey, through ritual landscape meditations and observational explorations. The remedy-making process with Glenade Lough enabled me to experience this place story, collected waters and energetic fragments.
This work attempts to convey a narrative from the perspective of the water, using myself as a vessel I try to distill this ephemeral environment. The Lough has many stories that are layered upon it and are held within the valley. In making seven waters remedies from the Lough I convey the emotions of these sensitive waters, made from all the people the water has encountered, the last brown bears in Ireland, the myth of the dobhar-chú. The water holds the
emotions of the landscape, distilled down the mountain into the lake. The water is altered by everything that has passed through it, in its chemical nature as well as alchemical and its capacity for influencing us.
Water seems ordinary. It is everywhere, in our bodies, in the lakes, rivers and the sea, and falling from the sky, which happens quite a lot in North Leitrim. It can slip through our fingers yet hold up a boat. It is a profoundly underrated substance.
I wish to take you on a journey to become part of the water, to listen to the whispers of stories yet untold from this place. My first journey was a physical one on an expedition to the Arctic where the power and importance of water is vastly apparent in the sublime landscape, and which I had to continually remind myself was real. It was manifested in the great glaciers, icebergs and seas of the Arctic. These unmapped spaces simulate spiritual sublimities. My second journey is one within the waters of Glenade Lough in North Leitrim, one of Ireland’s oldest glacial lakes.
‘Water Senses’ is supported by the Arts Council’s Arts and Disability Connect Scheme managed by Arts and Disability Ireland. It is kindly supported by Leitrim Sculpture Centre and The Model, Sligo.
Water Senses is a boxed publication which contains a unique water remedy, booklet, series of postcards and a map. First edition print of 100.
https://issuu.com/visualartistsireland/docs/van_ja_2017/14
https://visualartistsireland.com/museum-of-mythological-water-beasts
To order a copy of water senses please email info@celestialaquatics.com