These Fragile Monuments 

Building as Witness 

Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland 

2024

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These Fragile Monuments installed as part of the Building As Witness programme at Crawford Art Gallery. Building as Witness focuses on Crawford Art Gallery and its immediate surroundings which was witness to fascinating histories of local, national and international importance surrounding the Irish Civil War period. 

Inspired by the work of Hannah Ryggen, a Norwegian tapestry artist who made a series of powerful and mesmerising tapestries representing images of resistance and highlighting the brutality of the Nazi regime during Nazi occupied Norway in the Second World War. I designed a tapestry frieze that investigated Irish historical, art historical and contemporary representations of guerrilla warfare using surrealism as an aesthetic approach. We commissioned the amazing Ukrainian tapestry artist Zhanna Petrenko - who I met whilst on artist residency at NKD Norway in 2022 to weave the tapestry from her base in Kiev, Ukraine during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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​Furthermore, inspired by the exquisite array of Canova casts in the Sculpture gallery I created a sculpture of a dog reminiscent of the classical sculpture of the Jennings Dog found in the British museum. The dog, acting as a sentinel stands guard. Hand embroidered flames on the body reinforce the concept of something terrible having happened when viewed through the lens of the War of Independence.