A Land Removed – Statement
The work explores how the bog lands of central Ireland have been vacated and abandoned by migratory populations and industry. The photographs look in particular how man’s activities have indelibly, but subtly left their mark on the landscape.
The dialogue between man’s activities and the landscape raises the ideas of transition. The images show snippets of landscape, not as an illustration of reality but rather as images of a potential reality of this landscape. The photos illustrate places that we do not know about, too abandoned to be nature, places whose initial function we have long forgotten about, even if they have retained traces of it.
Commissioned by Westmeath County Council in 2003 under the Per Cent for Art Public Commissions.
