ARTIST STATEMENT 'LAND REMOVED' A Per Cent for Arts Scheme In response to the commission, the body of work here explores the actual physicality of how the land has been discarded, abandoned and vacated by migratory shifts of populations and agricultural industries with specific relation to the region in or around the village of Rathowen, County Westmeath. Traditionally epitomised a strong background in turf cutting and peat production within the area. Synonymous with traditional values and the representation of the land both inside and outside its terrain, the bog lands have undergone a decline in its usage and potentiality even in the rise of socio-economic growth over the last number of years. The photographs shown here explore under these parameters how these aspects have indelibly left their markings in the land. How this ambiguous situation is reflected in the landscape. How mans activities have left their mark on this land. What I try to seize upon might well be described as traumatic realism of a breaking point, not in the psychological sense of coping with an unresolved past, but as a short transitory glimpse of another reality. I try to preserve viewpoints in all their perplexity. The first sense with a place is important, that is the strong impression that interferes with a number of stored-up but pronounced images from our collective memory. I discover all the images by accident. Often there is a central motive that points towards a human presence, but this is not a binding formula.Somehow I try to install doubt into the notion of the sublime landscape by imposing an anomaly into it. Often there is an illusion to catastrophe, a calamity or disaster: some final event to put the materialistic myth of progress into perspective. These images are set in landscapes, found at the furthest reaches of society, touching on the confines of civilisation. These places have a face, a particular physiognomy that bears traces of a bygone activity or human presence. I trade the moment for a state of being. Instead of using the camera to cut a slice of time, I use it to gather evidence of duration, without a clear 'before' or 'after'. In order to undermine the attributed 'realism', I make it evident that this is not a reality: these are images of a reality. Dara McGrath Oct 2004 |