I keep thinking I am almost finished my solo exhibition - thin places of escape and return, which opens next week at SO Fine Art Editions, Dublin. And there always seems to be something else to do! The work, which I have been making since 2021, consists of a series of multi-plate colour etchings, alongside a body of collage etchings, which are made of a combination of monoprint, etching and collage. The motif of the house or dwelling space is central to my work, and the work in this show delves deeper into the notion of the house as a formative psychological structure, one that inhabits our dreams and our inner spaces.
The work draws its inspiration from iconic dwellings and structures in folklore and fairytale, exploring how these tales, and the houses and buildings in them, can shape our thoughts, our dreams and our memories. Irish and European texts provided an inspiration for many of the works in the exhibition, as were many of the great artists who have engaged with the subject matter before me - from Harry Clarke and Paula Rego to David Hockney and Shaun Tan. These stories are dark and deep. They are the stories we are told when we are tucked up safe in our beds; but they tell us about danger and evil: many of these structures are traps or prisons, things are not always as they seem.
These prints depict dark and fractal towers, glassy sharp mountains, and towering beanstalks, all familiar and yet strange. We have returned to the world of our childhood but something is different in this desolate oneiric universe. Something has changed. But maybe it is we who have changed in returning, like Oisín on his ill-fated trip from Tír na nÓg.
In recent years I have been making collage pieces alongside my etchings, which combine monoprint, etching and collage, to create unique one-off pieces. These works explore further the notion of the telling and retelling of a tale or a narrative. The etchings become the printed universe, or the vernacular from which I create my own visual language, which is altered with each iteration of the narrative, each re-telling of the tale. These repeated motifs can be seen as a metaphor for the telling and re-telling, the construction and re-construction of narratives, creating new contexts and meanings for the work.
