Myself and my friend and fellow artist Anna Marie Savage have talked for a number of years about the possibility of exhibiting bodies of work together as we both grew up along the border and both have frequently made work in response to the experiences and memories of how life was and is there. We approached the Tain Arts Centre in Dundalk and they suggested we add Ciaran Dunbar to the mix. The resultant exhibition brought together three very different views of life in proximity to the border. Anna’s work is extremely painterly. Her sensuous use of paint and ink is a very effective counterpoint to the harsh, often angular intrusions into the landscape that serve as her visual starting point; Ciaran’s work as a documentary photographer interrogates life along the border in a detached fashion while my work examines how landscape and memory are codependent in our own experience of an ambivalent past. I’ve gathered together the body of work I made for the exhibition in the ‘It Only Hurts If You Look At It’ page of this site.
The exhibition was warmly received and a second venue came on board with the exhibition moving to the Iontas Theatre and Arts Centre in Castleblayney, Co. Monaghan in August. The modern space of Iontas gives the exhibition a radically different context from the exhibition space of the Tain Arts Centre which was originally a set of cells under Dundalk Court House. The exhibition continues there until October 25th 2022.