Summer 2016 Notable dates
31st May 2016:
End of second year at Warwickshire College. Preparing my studio space and setting up work for assessment.
9th June 2016:
Althorpe Street Gallery. working as a volunteer helping two artists: Diana Oancea and Chiara Grant to set up their work in the gallery.
11th June 2016:
Fern Gallery, Balsall Common. Helping Alfreda to install Runcible.
18th June 2016:
Went to B.C.U. in Margaret Street to see the B.A. end of year show.
20th June 2016:
End of year show at Warwickshire College of Art.
22nd and 23rd July 2016:
Stayed in Oxford two nights for wedding of Tomi and Jess.
26th July 2016:
Afternoon ferry to Ireland to our cottage to stay for 5 weeks.
1st September 2016:
Travelled back from Ireland
13th September 2016:
Went to the Curzon Building in Birmingham to enrol on the B. A.
22nd September 2016:
Attended Level 6 Briefing Meeting at the School of Art, Margaret Street, Birmingham.
23rd September 2016:
Althorpe Street Gallery: Helped artist John Hunt to hang his paintings in the gallery.
BA Show June 2017
Title of my work :
The Plight of Sweeney
The Plight of Sweeney is inspired by an ancient Irish legend, c.637AD, a story/poem written in Gaelic as Buile Suibhne or The Madness of Sweeney. My work is based on Irish poet Seamus Heaney's translation entitled Sweeney Astray (1983).
The tale began when Sweeney, a pagan Ulster King, seriously offended a Christian cleric called Ronan; he put a curse on Sweeney that made him insane and transformed him and transformed him into a mythic half-man, half-bird, doomed to die at spear-point. After seven years roaming Ireland, a servant woman at a farm took pity on Sweeney and every morning gave him milk to drink from a hollow made with her heel in a cowpat. Jealous of her friendship with Sweeney, her husband killed him with a spear,
The Plight of Sweeney comprises three woodcut prints on Fabriano paper, (each 60 x 82cm), a floor mounted stone sculpture, and numerous wall mounted figures hand-cut from birch plywood.Each woodcut prints represents a highly charged emotional scene: 1) Insane, Sweeney imagines he is pursued by five detached bearded monster heads; 2) going back to visit his wife, he finds her bed is "still warm from her lover" who has just left; 3) his death at spear-point. The cowpat is hand carved in found Irish limestone I picked up in the landscape; birch is a species native to Ireland. For me the choice of these natural indigenous materials combined with the centuries old techniques of hand carving complement and give deeper meaning to my theme.
The legend of Sweeney in my work recounts his immense physical and mental suffering, set against the great beauty of the Irish landscape that he describes with such fervour. The Plight of Sweeney highlights the violent historical conflicts between the new Christian teaching and the older pagan beliefs and dying way of life; so my work can also be seen as a metaphor for changing modern ideas of national geography and identity in Ireland.
The Plight of Sweeney comprises three woodcut prints on Fabriano paper, (each 60 x 82cm), a floor mounted stone sculpture, and numerous wall mounted figures hand-cut from birch plywood.Each woodcut prints represents a highly charged emotional scene: 1) Insane, Sweeney imagines he is pursued by five detached bearded monster heads; 2) going back to visit his wife, he finds her bed is "still warm from her lover" who has just left; 3) his death at spear-point. The cowpat is hand carved in found Irish limestone I picked up in the landscape; birch is a species native to Ireland. For me the choice of these natural indigenous materials combined with the centuries old techniques of hand carving complement and give deeper meaning to my theme.
The legend of Sweeney in my work recounts his immense physical and mental suffering, set against the great beauty of the Irish landscape that he describes with such fervour. The Plight of Sweeney highlights the violent historical conflicts between the new Christian teaching and the older pagan beliefs and dying way of life; so my work can also be seen as a metaphor for changing modern ideas of national geography and identity in Ireland.
"The heads were pursuing him,
lolling and baying,
snapping and yelping,
whining and squealing."
"Restless as wingbeats
of memory, I hover
above you, and your bed
still warm from your lover."
"He shall roam Ireland, mad and bare.
He shall find death on the point of a spear"
He shall find death on the point of a spear"
Cowpat: Carving in Irish Limestone
My work for the end of year BA show at BCU Birmingham
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