The Maze Prison has been a symbol of the conflict on this island of Ireland from Internment in the 1970’s right through to the Peace process and the cessation of violence in recent years. In 2001 it was closed
Between 2006-2008 I photographically documented the demolition of this politically charged space.
In reference to this highly charged and contenious space, questions arise as to what “qualities” does that in-between space take on? Does the process of deconstructing and destroying the architecture of containment also erase memories, or are they wedded to the space that’s left behind? What happens to a space when its people are no longer needed there? Can a deeper understanding of the “cavity”, rather than the “solid”, also inform our understanding of creating architecture, or, in this case, the creation of anti-architecture?
Prison Site Exhibition
Deconstructing The Maze was presented as a multi disciplinary audio-visual installation on the former prison site (kitchen building) in Autumn 2008)
In collaboration with architect John Reid of Robinson MacIlwaine Partners, curator Marianne O’Kane-Boal, writer Rachel Andrews and multi-media artist Conor McFeely
The partners in this collaboration made a conscious decision to look at this building for its properties as a place of recent and still controversial history and its intersection with the process of building/deconstruction.
My work was presented as two digital slide back projections showing the images I created during the whole process of demolition of the controversial site that was also integrated into the leftover machinery of the kitchen building.
11th Venice Biennale of Architecture at the Irish Pavilion
The project Deconstructing the Maze was also shown as part of the Irish participation in 2008 at the 11th Venice Biennale of Architecture at the Irish Pavilion (Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, Sept-Nov). The exhibitions theme was the Lives of Spaces
The artist chose the site (the former Venetian residence of the Duchess of Parma) as an ideal environment to explore the dialogue between the ending or death of a building, and the context of the shows theme, The Lives of Spaces.
