I arrived at Milford House in early September 2023 for the residency entitled GRASS. Thanks to Deej and Live Art Ireland it was an opportunity to extend my usual practice of land art relating to waste to incorporate the element of GRASS, and to envisage new ways of considering what material culture means today.
With immense strength and flexibility, the way grass moves was a springboard into thought. The impact human material culture has on the environment – the way it is used to ‘control nature’ – gave rise to various symbolic expressions of this during the residency. A number of artworks were constructed where grass stalks or blades were weaved into or constrained by various (rectilineal) structures (human artefacts) found on various dumpsites nearby.
A short symbolic performance film of multiples of the human figure swaying as grass in a post-harvested field, posed the ‘what-if scenario’ the human form was similarly constrained.
And venturing into philosophical territory further, a short film summarising my time at Milford House proposed the idea that energy deriving from the sun and exchanged through all life forms is movement itself, and was human material culture not constraining the free flow of energy that is this process of life?
My art practice over the past 20 years or more has to do with using the neglected, the waste we produce, and reshaping it into contemplative new ways. Mostly this has been done so in situ, responding to each setting. I am based in Valencia, Spain, where I am currently working on a sound installation to do with metal cans that have been tossed into the countryside. It is a 3-piece project that, with video, also highlights and compares how ants use grass to build nests, and compares this with our human tendency for over-production.
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