Buried In The Suburbs

I had the initial idea of making these little box works probably more than a year ago but making art in the face of a full blown attempt to exterminate a people can stop you in your tracks. The idea that I could make anything meaningful at all, much less in the tin box format of the Attempts to Stop Death series seemed ridiculous,…

Two Little Boys

I’m not the most sentimental of people. My mother was famously unsentimental and would happily throw out anything that couldn’t prove itself to be of some practical use. I’m not quite as ruthless but the fact that I’ve moved dozens of times over the years means I’m fairly light on personal effects. A while ago my friend John sent me a photograph of us,…

Death and His Manservant

I don’t particularly think of myself as a surrealist. When there are odd juxtapositions in my work they are normally planned and programmatic. Purposeful. This work though has its origins in accident. I broke a favourite cup a few years ago, trying to do six things at once as usual and the coffee stained the floor of the space I was using as a…

Other People’s Pasts

One of the legends of Finn McCool tells of him being tricked by the Cailleach Beara who turns herself into a white deer and lures him into the volcanic lake at the summit of Slieve Gullion where he almost drowns. He gets out of this scrape, although I can’t remember how. I came across this photograph of a young man who decided to climb…

The Past Is A Foreign Country

When my mother died I inherited a couple of boxes of family photos. The bulk of them date to before I was born and some originally came to her from my uncle on his death. My uncle arrived home to Newry when I was a child and to my young eyes he was an exotic figure. He and a friend had run away to…

Still Drawing / Drawing Again

Drawing

Over the last couple of years I’ve made a preponderance of three dimensional work but a recent change of circumstance has forced me to re-think my practice. I’ve always had an interest in historic practices and the seemingly alchemical ways in which previous generations of artists used materials in inventive ways. One of the processes I’m particularly interested in is silverpoint. Before graphite lead…

The Cold Hard Facts Of Life

This piece is on show as part of the Artists At Work 2 exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery until February 12th 2023. I had originally intended to show one of the works from the Three Views of A Border exhibition but I couldn’t get the dates to work. Three Views was still touring in Ireland when the work had to be delivered…

The Sin Eater

A lot of us carry our guilt around. It weighs us down. Almost everyone has done at least one thing in our lives which we’re deeply ashamed of and which we have an unhealthy habit of letting define us. The Sin Eater is a piece which aims to empower the viewer, or the actor because you interact with this work far more than you…

Three Views Of A Border

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…