Precious, Precious Gold
Photobook excerpt, exhibited in Dublin Artist Book Fair, selected for the National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) collection, Dublin
‘Precious, precious gold’, explores place as a vessel for memory, home and belonging. The aim of the project was to find the closest sense of home and belonging to a place. A desire which stemmed from feelings of non belonging, due to experiencing racist violence in childhood which required moving house and town .
Just the memory of it-that’s all you have now-just the memory; and even now, even so soon, it is being distilled of all its coarseness; and what’s left is going to be precious, precious gold…”
- Philadelphia Here I Come, Brian Friel
Organza print installed in ‘Infinite Becomings’, 2021 NCAD Gallery, Dublin
Pinpointing memories of home to one place in Northern Ireland, the memories were recorded and re-enacted in the place they were tied to. During the re-enactment process the camera was held to create a first person perspective. All the images are long exposures, capturing any movements made while holding the camera and re-enacting the memory. The resulting long exposure image provided a weak digital approximation of what could be mentally pictured of the memory.
The photobook explores our connection to place, the fragility of memory and the ritual of both in constructing ‘home’.
Photobook read-through, 2016