Alison McEvoy
Abbeyleix Bog Project manages 500 acres, that includes 100 acres of raised bog. Today the main path at Abbeyleix Bog Project traces the same route as the old railway line and the boardwalk twists its way across the bog with spectacular views all around. It includes scrub, bog and conifer woodland, cutover bog etc.
Along the walk you’ll spot sphagnum moss, bog cotton, the invasive rhododendron, the bog cranberry, bee orchid, sundew, the red squirrel, the large heath butterfly and so much more. From the ever-changing colours and textures, it’s a haven for the community and creatives alike. My own work is heavily influenced by the bog
How do communities and creatives cultivate care for nature and for each other despite extractivism? Within Abbeyleix community we’ve got many groups that use the bog walk for exercise and for social and creative events. The ABP creates a calendar each year, most have been photography based but last year we created a calendar with creative works based on or inspired by Abbeyleix Bog. It was a huge success. So to follow on from that, myself and the bog committee will be organising a creative festival this Summer to include a Plein Air Festival and art, craft and design workshops on or around the bog. This is an exciting way to encourage creation on the bog when the consequences of extraction could have meant we couldn’t even consider it to be there.
Also the creative inspiration lost would be immeasurable. In the past we’ve seen many nature walks for children, adults and school groups which fosters a sense of respect and presence for the bog, being mindful of your surroundings, leaving no trace behind. It will be exciting to create something to encourage more people to the bog who will appreciate the beauty and the soul of the bog while hopefully producing a body of work to mirror that sentiment
Ashley Cahillane
The seaside town of Morecambe is known for its vast sands and mudflats. Its beaches are associated with biodiversity and beauty, but also danger in the form of fast tides and quicksand.
A recent industrial disaster there has associated the sands with the extractive industries of human trafficking for cheap labour. On 5th February 2004, 23 illegal and low-paid workers drowned while harvesting cockles on the beach. They were new to the area and unused to the tides. The tragedy led to new regulations on forced labour, yet modern global slavery has intensified.
I explored my site through print art before visiting it. I started printing with the large sands as the base layer. Yet, I struggled technically with adding more layers due to my experience with the printing tools. The sands – as a base layer – dominated my prints. Upon reflection, I realised that the sands in Morecambe Bay dominate too – ecologically, economically (for fishing and tourism), and culturally. It’s okay for the base layer (the sands) to be the main focus. I brought this perspective when I eventually visited the site, having newfound respect for backgrounds and the contribution of the sands to the area
Katherine Fama
The Wicklow Mountains have been a mining region for centuries, a source of iron, copper, gold, and alum. My prints reflect on a recent visit to the former mining area in the Glendalough glacial valley, where the monastic sites and National Park have proven a huge tourist draw. The Wicklows feature in my early memories of visiting Ireland and became a favourite place to hike when I relocated here.
My two prints focus on the same view of Glendalough, first remembered through hiking it Spinc Walk, with a faint print of a hiking lace forming the horizon. The second print acknowledges the potential return of mining in the Wicklows, with the recent discovery of Lithium.
Katherine McSharry
I worked for many years in at the National Library of Ireland. Between 2015 and 2018, I was Project Director for the NLI of a public private partnership with the Bank of Ireland to create the exhibition Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again. Curated by Geraldine Higgins, Professor of Irish Studies at Emory University, the exhibition includes an extended consideration of the bog in Heaney’s work.
The content of the exhibition, and my reflections on how the experience of creating it is preserved, changed and transformed in my memory, inspired the pieces I produced in the workshop.
Lucy Collins
Boora Bog is cutaway peat bog in County Offaly, managed by Bórd na Mona and used to produce fuel, principally milled peat for electricity generation at Ferbane power station. The environmental and archaeological significance of the area has long been known and was acquired by the Irish Wildlife Federation.
It was not until 2019 that industrial peat production ceased completely on the site, however. It is now a public amenity with walking and cycling trails, and a sculpture park.
Boora Bog is a place of transformation, and an example of successful transition from extractivism to environmental preservation. Decades of work by local community groups ensured the transformation of this area into a new kind of resource-one that honours the biodiversity of the site while also acknowledging it as a space of human community and memory. Artistic engagement fosters awareness of the complexity of place and of our emotional connection to it. The process of making (and remaking) reminds us of the persistence needed to enact change, and to move from loss to recovery.
Megan Kuster
In the context of extractive industry chains, Poolbeg is a conversion site where natural gas and oil are converted into electricity which is then transferred onto the national grid. Poolbeg is reclaimed land, extending from the villages of Ringsend/Irishtown into Dublin Bay.
It includes important cultural landmarks, like the Poolbeg Chimneys belong to a now-decommissioned electricity station, Poolbeg’s present constellation of energy infrastructure intersects with primary sites of extraction elsewhere. I wonder about what all of this might mean for Poolbeg’s, and the surrounding communities’, different potential futures.
Thinking about Poolbeg while experimenting with the gelli plate, I wanted to suggest how spacially and temporally distanced extractivist sites converge at Poolbeg. As a conversion site, where natural oil and gas are transformed into electricity, Poolbeg is a site of connection between geographically distanced communities that are directly impacted by the extraction of oil and gas and individuals that consume the converted electricity. All oil and about 75% of natural gas used in Ireland is imported. Imported gas arrives in Ireland through the UK, from a, from a pipeline originating in Moffat, Scotland, The other quarter of Ireland’s gas comes from the Corrib gas field off the west coast of County Mayo (SEAI, Energy in Ireland Report, 2022).
It is quixotic to imagine the Poolbeg Chimneys as wind turbines. But the main point here is to consider how local generation might confront some of the inequalities exacerbated by extractivist patterns. Potentially more apt than a Poolbeg on-shore wind project, how might the adjacent villages act collectively to ensure they are not bypassed in a lower-carbon energy generating scheme, such as district heating which would convert Covanta’s energy byproduct into heating for the high-density Docklands area?
Paula McGrath
My site is the ghost of Clontarf Island in Dublin Bay. The construction of the South and Bull Walls in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries created a scouring effect in Dublin Bay, which threatened the island’s existence.
A build-up of silt meant locals could walk out at low tide to illegally remove cartloads of sand which was sold as manure and for building purposes. What remained of the island was washed away in a storm in 1844. The site has been ‘reclaimed’ and its ghost lies somewhere beneath Clontarf Westwood Gym.
I’m interested in sand as a finite resource and its use in building, beach replenishment and fertilisation. What happened when sand is removed from one beach to create another? Where is sand mining illegal and where is it not (and why)? What does it mean to build a city like Singapore with sand exported from the Philippines? How should we feel about these issues?
I’m also interested in cycles of extractivism. I recently learned that my great-grandfather made his living by removing loads of sand and guano from an island in Glandore Bay in his sand boat and selling it to farmers as fertiliser. As a writer and teacher of creative writing, I have long understood that art can lead to new understanding and knowledge.
Experiencing the same process through gelli printing, where colour, texture, pattern, and shape take priority over language was incredibly freeing, as was the realisation that the end result cannot be predicted or controlled( at least not by me!). The form insists on valuing process over product, which made the workshop experience nourishing and comforting, despite its themes.
Sarah Comyn
This series of prints explores the ERGO mining operations of DRDGold Limited in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the company is re-mining gold mining dumps. This re-mining involves the transportation of the mined materials through pipes to a massive tailing dam in Brakpan.
It is envisaged that once the old gold mine dumps are re-mined that they will ‘reverse the legacy of mining’ and become spaces for housing development. This series explores the toxicity of the mining sites and the tailings dam, and tries to imagine what a future housing development might look like o there previous mine lands.
Sinead Lawson
These prints were created as a result of visits to Direct Provision sites. As a visitor to these centres, I have seen first hand what is lost to families when they give up their lives I their home countries to travel to the unknown.
This is further compounded by the pressure that is placed upon them by the State to confirm to a system that is not fit for purpose. Cultural identities are lost of blurred as families strive to assimilate into a new land.
How do communities and creatives cultivate care for nature and for each other despite extractivism? Creatives and creativity itself is ideal for bringing communities together and fostering a respect for each other and for the place we love. Creativity does not discriminate but is an idea springboard to cross language and cultural barriers and encourage expression and transformation. Creativity also enables people of all abilities to find new ways to communicate and share their lived experiences.
Sarah Comyn & Katherine Fama
Inspired by the sustainable local regreening work of Bloomin Crumlin, We decided to make the paper for printmaking from our recycled egg cartons. We began with a linocut of the
Bangor Circle road map. The circle is both a familiar landmark for Crumlin, and the site of future community greening plans. We then monoprinted local plants, including cherry, strawberry, daisy, bluebell, and nigella leaves and blooms. We were interested in the interplay of local greens with the hard concrete surfaces of the Circle.
