Paul Gaffney | Debbie Godsell | Fiona Kelly | Sarah Long | Róisín O’Sullivan
Curated by Niamh Brown
Opening Reception Thursday 6th March, 6pm
Panel Discussion Saturday 29th March, 2pm
Backwater Artists Group is delighted to present our inaugural Emerging Curator Award Exhibition. This exhibition’s title “At first / I was land” is borrowed from the first two lines of Eavan Boland’s poem Mother Ireland first published in 1995. In Mother Ireland, Boland explores the complex and idealised metaphor of Ireland as a woman or maternal figure, and the reality faced by women living under patriarchy. Exploring ideas of sacrifice and identity while tying a physical body to the land, Boland reminds us where we’ve come from, and our fraught relationship to and with the Irish landscape.
Land is a contested subject in Ireland, whether it be about ownership, use, or protection. Yet, it grounds us and keeps us connected. At first / I was land brings together artists who probe their bonds with the land and landscape. These are both direct and indirect, physical and ephemeral, material and spiritual. Notions of healing, rest, and time, are explored in artworks that span painting, sculpture, photography, and moving image.
In Paul Gaffney’s photographic series, We Make The Path by Walking, the artist explores long-distance walking as a form of meditation and personal transformation. Over the course of a year, Gaffney walked over 3500 kilometers through rural Portugal, Spain and France resulting in a quiet yet striking body of work. Also responding to time immersed in the land, Róisín O’Sullivan’s work utilises painting and mark-making to create intimate, abstract and otherworldly landscapes. Intuitively collecting found pieces of knotted wood and branches, O’Sullivan’s work shapes natural forms where motifs, including eyes, start to appear suggesting elements of mysticism and spirituality.
Debbie Godsell’s work takes the harvest as the starting point to consider traditions, folklore, perceptions, and cultural identity. Heads constructed from printed and collected materials are assembled to form mummer-like portraits of The Protestors. Each face represents a person connected to the landscape, from those who owned the land and those who worked it. Land comes into Fiona Kelly’s practice through concepts of use and fallowness. Fallowness comes from the practice in agriculture whereby fields are left untilled or to rest. It encourages cultivated soil to regain and renew, and can be applied to how we live and work. Kelly’s work records the Spilt Hill Esker landmass and pseudo mountains of waste at the repurposing plant, Gannon ECO, in Co Westmeath and the latent potential of the fallowed land.
Returning to Eavan Boland’s Mother Ireland and in turn to Sarah Long’s practice. Long takes the allegory of Mother Ireland and rejects the reduction of the female form that has acted as a descriptor for national identity, culture and politics in Ireland. Through painting, text and moving image, Long takes an auto-fictionalised approach to contemporary female experiences and draws links to nature and mythology.
At first / I was land, brings together artists that focus upon the various ways that humans interact with the land and how our relationship with it has changed over time. The artists remind us that land holds a restorative power, allowing us to pause, reflect, and heal in ways that are deeply personal and profound.
Location: Backwater Artists Group, Wandesford Quay, The Lough, Cork
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