Abstract

Saturday June 11, 2022
@10am - 11:30am CT

An Artist Presentation

Fledglings each of us, too old for our years from watching ways of war, stealth and the flickering of soaked clothe igniting the petrol in milk bottles, just before they crash-land and splatter in fluid pools of molten gold, chiming like broken chandeliers; the sound became very loud inside me over years. It moved into unconscious compositions that visited without invite and often joined in discord when listening to music from early seventies. Having seen too much, too young, we were astute in reading political posturing from the ones considered oracles, with a juvenile’s wisdom in accessing the tensions shown in peoples posture and gait and of drawing accurate conclusions to the outcome for the evening to whether there would be trouble or not. Of course we learned to live with it. We were sharp adapters, weighing, weighing, shift-shaping, carefully considering each route we walked, weighing what we said to strangers, careful to remove too much accent as we were experts in accents and could pinpoint where the ‘other’ was from, what their co-ordinates were. There was no random dropping of pins, there was no room for error. It could cost you your life. There is sanctuary in watching the tidal marks of seaweed on the shores of Lough Swilly; these meditations sometimes produce small perforations; little channels ventured into from the here and now to there, in order to cross reference, to make sense and make no sense; a realisation of being adrift, of something lost, internally displaced and unbelonging’  Bernadette Hopkins ‘A Pound of Feathers’

My presentation will focus on and show the interweaving of my art practice through the lens of collaborative work and the processes I bring to my work as an activist. I am interested in opening ideas and discussion around the finite reserve the planet contains and our unending human demands and over consumption. For every battery operated car there is a mining company mining a community somewhere in the world and destroying their water systems, health and ability to grow food. Lack of water and food leads to migration. Small changes and patterns in the movement of thousands of tiny species and wildlife can have dramatic consequences on the survival and extinction of other forms of life. This is also true of human migration and displacement. Recent collaborative projects and performances including ‘Wild Swans’, address aspects of displacement. The present international refugee crisis and energy/fuel pressures have all refocused attention on the global political context and ongoing geo-politics. Through my activist work with Communities Against the Injustice of Mining and the Rights of Nature Network Ireland and recent working with Zapatista women during their stay in Ireland, I create performances from images that arise out of this work, shapeshifting into, that I am part of a fully integrated life system with nature. As an artist and an activist, it is only natural that these two states of my being, which make up a huge part of my life, should merge into each other and their actions become one life for me. I look forward to the chance to talk about this role as artist and activist that is sometimes looked at in a dim light from corners of the art world; and I emphasize here the darkness that is in those corners, the the colonial conservatives ‘don’t rock the boat’ squad and the fearful gate keepers who know art and culture really can move mountains.