The Wall
160cm high x 125cm wide (& 180cm high x 180cm wide)
Mosses, lichens, Bryophytes, Ferns, Wildflowers, Brambles, Ivy, Resin & Acrylic
In 2008 I was approached by The National Museum to create a piece for the Contemporary Collection. I wanted to reference the collection somehow, and so took a tour one Monday while The Museum was closed with the furniture curator Jennifer Goff who happens to be one of the world’s leading experts on Eileen Gray. Her tour of those rooms was particularly interesting and I decided to reinterpret the famous 1920’s Brick Screen.
Walls tell many stories and have played a fascinating part in history – keeping people in, or people out. In Ireland we still have the walls from Celtic forts, early Christian monasteries, Norman castles and towns, English estates and the divided religious zones in the north, as well as the ubiquitous are the stone walls that criss-cross the country. Using resin allowed me to suspend stories in optically clear yet physically solid panels, to create an interior ‘wall’ that functions to divide a space but allow light and visibility through parts. Aesthetically these walls are even more interesting as they start to crumble and are slowly reclaimed by nature – mosses and lichens, brambles and ivy, ferns, sedems and wildflowers all rooting for life wherever possible.