checking in

Since I have now successfully, somehow, miraculously survived the entire first year of this MFA, I thought it was about time to share the work in progress in a more formal way - as opposed to dropping the odd thing on Instagram. 

When I wrote the last post published on this blog I hadn't even begun this work. I didn't even know this was the project. I was afraid to let this be the project. I guess it's pretty typical of me to end up making something personal, it seems like it's the only thing I know. But this project is without a doubt the most difficult and most complex I've forced myself to confront so far. Writing this post may actually be more of an exercise in checking in with myself on this. 

Throughout my first year, I've been at battle with this issue. At it's very core, it is in a way quite simple. But there are so many layers and layers and years and years of trauma and nuance which have begun to weave themselves into this story, that figuring out exactly how much information to disclose to you, the viewer, has left me perpetually stumped. 

I have two birth certificates on file in the Irish Civil Registry system. I exist twice. Two childhoods and two versions of myself ran alongside each other: one recorded through photographic documents in my family archive, and the other, documented only on my birth certificate - the "ultimate document of identity". For the majority of my life I have been trying to come to terms with the circumstances of my childhood. I have always felt this duality, I just never realised it was literally recorded this way, and the discovery of this lead me on the journey which began the making of this work. 

My approach to making work is always the same - I will revisit locations associated with the events or time I am confronting and begin to make pictures. I suppose I believe that by making such contemplative journeys that something might reveal itself to me, that something might trigger a memory, or that the landscape may present itself to me in such a way that visually represents the issues I'm grappling with. 

One November day, not too long after my birthday, I was out on one of these meditative pilgrimages making pictures and feeling very dissatisfied with them. The landscape wasn't really giving me anything, all that was in these places was trees and fences, and I was starting to feel frustrated with not knowing how to photograph something that just...isn't there. This bleak landscape certainly represented one aspect of this time in my life, but couldn't even begin to scratch the surface on the complex issues of identity and memory that were emerging through my research and thinking. How could I approach this? How can you represent something that's entirely abstract? 

Once again I was left feeling incredibly frustrated with the lack of ability of the straight photographic image to tell my stories. It's just not enough. The work is too personal, and too complicated to exist like that. A gust of wind swept through the grounds of the Church of Assumption in Walkinstown and I noticed the leaves falling from the trees. I could call it some lightbulb moment of divine inspiration but in truth it was really an act of desperation when I decided there and then to start collecting a few leaves.

I won't totally discredit myself and say it was a fluke, as I had already begun thinking about the relevance of trees in this project - as I mentioned, when I was out making pictures that really was all there was to photograph. I feel like I knew there was something there. There are of course links between trees and genealogy, and I had also began wondering if the trees that were in these places were also there when I visited them in my other life. The trees were my witnesses, and I took from them their leaves. And so began the new journey of creating something new from the old parts of myself. 

From this point on, the battle shifted from not knowing what to make, to not knowing what I'm supposed to be saying about it. Look how much I've already written here, it's like this project needs so much context, but I'm not sure how much information I want to disclose. This is a deeply personal thing, but I don't want it to be so self indulgent that the viewer can't engage with the work. How can I let you in? How much do you need to know? What is really going on here?

This was when I started thinking about making my own paper. I had been looking at the work of Gerhard Richter and Jonny Briggs, and I really wanted to incorporate these kinds of hand-made, hand-crafted elements to the work. It was quickly becoming clear that this was a mission to reclaim this story. I have a deep dissatisfaction with the information which was forced to be included on my second birth certificate, so here I am rejecting that, and literally creating with my own hands my own documents. 

The still untitled work in progress is about regaining control over a situation where I previously had none. It's about the reclamation of my own story through the reimagining of what exactly it is that makes us who we are. It's about bringing together that which had previously been pushed apart or pushed away and re-appropriating it to make sense of it. This methodology of revisiting these locations, taking something from them, the reappraisal of these objects, and the readdressing of old issues - it all plays into this idea of reconstruction. 

The work is an acknowledgment that despite the struggles I've faced, I have always been able to recreate something new from a past which has haunted me. I think this work is the culmination of the approach I have been taking to my practice for the last six or seven years, and it really reflects the sentiment behind the title of this blog. I will always work with the negatives, and from them create something new.