My current practice is an auto-ethnographic reflection on place, uncovering the phenomena and the reverberations of growing up near the Northern Irish border, a complicated and unruly place dominated by colonial legacies and conflict, which is explored through research, memory and anecdote, and realised through painting, sculpture and text.
Whether writing or making, a process of unravelling and unpicking, of spinning yarns and weaving narrative threads takes place, and through the tacit processes of creating, the joy and panic of physically working through fabric, paper, plaster and paint, I construct a neo-narrative and re-enchant the history and the geography of my place.
In the end, I dig where I stand in order to ask – do we know our place from the ground or from the air? From books or from stories passed down? From assumptions or misinterpretations? Or do we really just need to make our own map?
Installation Shot, MFA Show 2022. Photo: Kate Bowe O'Brien
'Hessian Map'; Hessian, acrylic, oak, pine, linseed oil, 140 x 200 x 120cm. Photo: Kate Bowe O'Brien
'Floor Map' (detail); Hessian, plaster, plywood, pine, acrylic, 140 x 140cm. Photo: Kate Bowe O'Brien
'Paper Map'; Acrylic on fabriano, 145 x 300cm. Photo: Kate Bowe O'Brien
'Large Empty Opposite'; Chalk spray paint, 29.7 x 294cm. Photo: Kate Bowe O'Brien
Left: 'Light Map'; Acrylic on gesso panel, 18 x 24cm. Right: 'Dark Map'; Acrylic on gesso panel, 18 x 24cm
'Grail'; Acrylic on fabriano, 140 x 140cm
'X'; Hessian, steel wire, acrylic, 300 x 120cm. Photo: Kate Bowe O'Brien
'Cluster'; Acrylic on fabriano, 140 x 140cm
'In Search of the Grail'; Acrylic on fabriano, 140 x 140cm