Scenic Roots is a group exhibition exploring rural life, queer identity, folklore, biodiversity, sustainability, the Anthropocene, and social and cultural influence, through drawing and sculpture. With artists Kian Benson Bailes, Laura Fitzgerald, Lisa Fingleton, Siobhán McGibbon, and Maria McKinney, curated by Laura O’Connor.
Text by Curator Laura O Connor:
Contemporary art in Ireland seems to be having a moment where artists are looking to the land to ask questions about identity, responsibility, and social change. Many of the artists in Scenic Roots have shared spaces in previous group shows dealing with land, agriculture, and rural life. It’s also not the first exhibition about the land that the Townhall has hosted in the past few years. It makes me wonder what is drawing contemporary artists to these themes.
Of course, artists have historically dealt with the land, landscape, rural life, and identity but contemporary practice is posing some new questions around these themes or at least they are framing them differently. Queer identity, folklore, biodiversity, sustainability, the Anthropocene, social and cultural influence interweave the works in Scenic Roots. They combine ideas around the past and folklore, proposals for the future, and changing landscapes. Each of the artists is embedded in the countryside, whether through patronage or through a passion to explore alternative stories that the land speaks.
Kerry-based Laura Fitzgerald invites us on a journey to the future via “the scenic route” where her stacks of bales debate whether they are emerging or established in an inner monologue of arts council application catchphrases with interruptions about what spin cycle to put the clothes on. Fitzgerald considers future findings buried within the fields and what archaeologists of the future will make of us with our washing machines buried with dead cows in “some kind of sacrifice to the washing machine gods”, the bog bodies of the future.
In turn, Siobhan McGibbon gives us a glimpse as to what the bodies of the post-human Anthropocene might look like with her melding of invasive species such as Japanese knotweed with farm equipment and neon clay. These bodies that inhabit the world of Xenophon, an “alter-imaginary” world created by McGibbon and writer Maeve O’Lynn, pose questions about the future or possible new relations that merge when we push the boundaries of what it means to be human.
Kian Benson Bailes reimagines the Cailleach, or ‘Old Hag’ as a queer boy from rural Sligo. Referencing his own identity in the work he conjures up images of Peig with a sense of drag, combining the familiar of his mother and grandmother’s headscarves with two shapeshifting insects that tower over us, commanding us to arch our necks and make eye(s) contact.
Gleaning stories of the past from small farms in Wexford Maria McKinney’s work considers the part these small holdings play in drastic global events. A suit of armour made from Jacob’s Cream Crackers in reference to Hard Tack or “survival bread” drapes over two 12-foot arched gates, these two devices designed to protect and defend are subverted, no longer powerful barriers but possible bridges for bread breaking.
Image: Sandwich Project, Digital/ Vinyl Print, Lisa Fingleton, 2018
Lisa Fingleton is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and grower who along with her partner runs a nineteen-acre organic farm and social farming project called The Barna Way. Fingleton is a grower and a gatherer, she gathers stories from the land about climate change and sustainability and translates them into witty illustrations that pose serious questions about the future of the small farm and the future of the fields. Where does our food come from? How did we get here? What will lunch look like in 2050?
Image: Lunch 2050: Did Children Really Eat Food Grown In Dirt? Ink on paper, 210mm x 297mm, Lisa Fingleton, 2023
Dinner 2050: Thankfully we are much more civilised now, Ink on paper, 330mm x 400mm, Lisa Fingleton, 2023
This time travelling exhibition takes us on a journey where we must look back to see how we got here but looking forward into the unknown causes all kinds of difficult questions and throws up any number of unwanted and unfamiliar truths, but who better to speculate these unknowns than the artists!
Exhibition runs until 15th September, 10am- 4pm Tues-Fri, 11am-4pm Sat, or by appointment.
Cereal Toxicity, Watercolour on Paper, 210mm x 297mm , Lisa Fingleton, 2023
Always Read The Label, Watercolour on Paper, 295mm x 315mm, Lisa Fingleton, 2023
Poster Image credit: Siobhan McGibbon, To whom are we response-able?, 2023. Photo by Tom Flanagan, courtesy of Galway Arts Centre