This week I travelled to the Bastogne War Museum in Belgium for the opening of the 3rd stage of the Art of Remembrance Project (seen in previous posts). I was struck by the monumental Mardasson Memorial just beside the museum. The memorial was dedicated in 1950 and it commemorates the 76, 890 US Army soldiers who were killed or wounded in and around Bastogne between December 1944 and January 1945 as part of the Battle of the Bulge - or Ardennes Offensive. Designed by architect Georges Dedoyard, with mosaics in the crypt by Fernand Leger, the memorial is in the shape of a five pointed American star. Part of the inscription states that the memorial is " Dedicated to the enduring friendship of the peoples of Belgium and the United States who forged a bond from their common struggle to defeat the enemy of all the free peoples". True at the time, no doubt,  I wonder how this statement stands today and what has changed (geo-politically at least) about the nature of friendships, who now is considered the enemy and what is meant by freedom? As the US continues to pursue its own singular form of  politics and foreign policy, it seems that the friendship it once offered the world, has now become toxic to some. Much as in our personal relationships , can we rely on bonds forged in the past to sustain us into the future? Can we still be friends with someone if that friendship comes with conditions that do not align with our own world view or do we ignore their present behaviours in the hope that somehow that toxic friend will return to how they were, our cherished ally from the past? It's hard to let go but perhaps, in some cases, it's for the best. 

June has been a little hectic to say the least. From Belfast to Bialystok, via Berlin, there has been a lot of time spent on trains and on staring out of train carriage windows as unfamiliar landscapes appear and disappear at speed. The Sybir Memorial Museum in Bialystok, Poland, was the setting for the third iteration of the Art of Remembrance Project and to me, it was the most atmospheric  and dramatic setting so far. The sombre lighting and scenography throughout the ground section of the museum was a deliberate reflection of its role as a site of memory and memorial for all those who were deported from the region to Siberia and elsewhere during the Second World War. The few days I spent in Bialystok were governed by wind, rain and cold. When I reached Berlin for an overnight stay, I was glad of a bit of warmth and sun. By the time I reached Frankfurt the next day, there were heat warnings in place as the temperature in parts of Europe soared to unbearable levels. I will be glad to reach the more tolerable temperatures in Northern Ireland. We might complain about our weather but it is neither too hot or too cold compared say, to Siberia, or Southern Spain. It makes me question the future and wonder who will be able to live and work comfortably within their environment and who will have to struggle through unbearable heat? What are we prepared to share or give up so that we can all - people and creatures - live and breathe comfortably together? Is it more important to provide water to cool data centres, or to leave a bowl of water outside in the shade so a wasp can have a drink, or a bird a refreshing bath? I know what I believe. Change comes with small things.

 This month was a little different. Sculptures which are normally shown indoors, went outdoors as part of Art in the Park curated by Adriana Valderrama in association with Artlink, Fort Dunree. From the Artlink website:
" Art in the Park V brings together nine artists across Swan Park in Buncrana, transforming this public space into an open-air gallery. This year’s exhibition invites visitors to explore artworks that engage with themes such as ecology and land use, migration, memory, belonging, walking as an artistic practice, colonial histories, and the creative reuse of everyday materials. These ideas come together under a shared theme At the Threshold." There were 9 artists (Including me) exhibiting work in a variety of settings from the shore, to the riverbank to the basement of a derelict keep. Examples of work by artists Annie Hogg, Jessica Auer, Santiago Vélez, Gail Ritchie, Rosalind Lowry, Darcy Patterson, Sue Morris, Roberto Uribe-Castro, and Locky Morris can be seen here www.artlink.ie/whats-on/art-in-the-park-v/
It has been very gratifying and moving to see how the public have engaged with my work, 'Letting Go' (From Elegies for the Dead, 2022) and 'Home for Ghosts' (2022) . The image shown on the left 'Letting Go' takes its aesthetic from formal funerary architecture. The words used on the stone are written by me. They are ambiguous and elegiac, and relevant to anyone who has lost someone.  We all struggle with loss and when we lose someone meaningful in our lives we can only hold the memories close, for as long as we can, before they dissolve. Around the world there is conflict. People are lost to violence and people are left behind to grieve and remember. How can there be a hierarchy of suffering when, as human beings, we all feel pain?  

April has been a busy month. The second leg of the Art of Remembrance Project opened in Turin and closer to home, I was part of an exhibition which explores the sensory experiences of conflict from a variety of perspectives - artists, academics, film makers and those working in the realms of memory and legacy. As the exhibition considered the sensory traces of conflict-related trauma it made me wonder, conversely, what after effects of war do those who wage it suffer - if at all? A scan of recent news headlines is enough to show that the effects of war have always been divided. There are those who suffer and those who profit. Worse yet are those who manipulate markets from a distance enhancing their own personal and often obscene wealth while impoverishing others who had little left to lose. What impact can exhibtions such as these have during times of international conflict? The answer is not clear to me but what I do know is that doing something is better than doing nothing. Giving voice to memories and hidden stories, highlighting forgotten injustices and acknowledging the wrongs of the past are ways to reject the inevitabilty of war. It is a way to promote dialogue and understanding of the 'other' , a way to engage with versions of the past which we may not have experienced or agreed with and a way to include one's own history and memory into the narrative. Sadly, there will always be a war somewhere and so there will always be a need for exhibitions which reflect on conflict from a variety of perspectives. 

Finally, after what seemed like a very long time, The Art of Remembrance was launched at the House of Nijemegen History in the Netherlands to coincide with the start of the LRE Foundation (Liberation Route Europe) annual congress. The exhibition was opened by the Mayor of Nijemegen with speeches by Curator Isabelle Benoit and LRE Brussels Director Remi Praud. It was great to meet the other artists in person and to see their work. Rebekka Bauer (Germany), Raphael Della Porta (France) and Juhana Moisander (Finland) worked respectively at Paraloup, Italy; Bastogne, Belgium and the Sybir Memorial Museum, Poland. Rebecca's mixed media work in glass, text and organic materials adressed issues of memory and resistance. Raphael's photographic installation used trees as a device to reflect on testimony and witnessing history while Juhana produced Makta, a beautiful video installation which addressed the themes of deportation and violence. From April the exhibition will travel to each of the residency locations including La Coupole, France, the site of my own residency in 2025. For anyone who wants to keep up to date with the travelling exhibition, the project website is www.art-of-remembrance.eu
The exhibition, catalogue and Art of Remembrance is a transnational project co-funded by the European Union's Creative Europe Programme. My work was part funded by the Arts Council Nothern Ireland National Lottery Fund.

  Above, a series of four drawings, documented in the studio before being packed and shipped off to Europe as part of the Art of Remembrance project. It's strange to think that it was almost a year ago that I heard the news about my selection for this project and now here we are, almost done. The drawing series Crater / Creatura  shown above depicts different types of wounds and ruptures on a physical surface. From tiny holes found in the floor  of the tunnels at La Coupole to a reimagined landscape ruined by war and to the craters on the surface of the moon, these drawings reduce all forms of rupture (physical, geological, meteorological) to the same scale. The drawings link the terrestial to the celestial and include one crater that was made in the studio, using a box of concrete powder and an egg. Time runs through these drawings - days, decades and eons. Seconds of performative action in the studio. Hours of making marks on paper. Making these drawings was a meditation. Each one contains memories of the research period at La Coupole as well as the memories of the circumstances surrounding their making once I returned home. As they travel around Europe from March to September they will accrete new memories to add to mine, when I see them again. I hope that when others see the drawings, they might recall their own memories and wounds and know that these ruptures, hidden or otherwise, are only a small part of the whole. What you see depends on how you look.
 

The start of a new year and the world seems to have gone mad! There is too much going on to be able to comment or make sense of everything much less understand how we can stay grounded and sane. Since October, I have been focused on finishing the work arising from my residency at La Coupole. The image above: Hector (in memorium 1961) seems be appropriate for the current times. It is my reponse to an image in the archive which showed a rat, Hector, being prepared for his trip into outer space. Something about the image has haunted me ever since. Some might think of a rat as pest, a beast, a disposible commodity to be used for experimentation and worse. Some think of people in the same way. Yet, if we think of rats as sentient beings capable of feeling emotions such as joy and pain would we be so ready to exterminate them or to send them into the void of space? For me, Hector is a symbol both of his own creaturely life which deserves to be remembered and the lives of others who, right now, are being treated no better than vermin, with no more rights or recourse to the law. 

Just as it proved nearly impossible to fit both me and this monument into the frame, so it is equally difficult to put into words the experiences of the past couple of months - so I won't even try! Although I have spent my time at La Coupole researching the Second World War as part of the Art of Remembrance project, I spent my last day visiting sites from  World War One, in the company of two expert guides.  In 2009, I completed a set of drawings called The Memorial Series - 36 ink drawings on graph paper of war memorials, mainly in France. One of the drawings showed the Vimy Ridge Memorial (above) and it was done from photographs. I never thought I would get the chance to see it in person. Now  I have and the experience was very powerful. The landscape in which it sits is covered in shell holes and craters, now covered in grass, but still reminiscent of a painting by Paul Nash. There is nothing stranger than dreams and mine are as strange as the next person's but visiting Vimy Ridge was a dream come true for me. It might have taken some sixteen years before it happened but it was worth the wait. The lesson for me in all of the above is to keep dreaming and to not put a timeline against it. As I prepare to travel back to Belfast, I know that this memorial and the memories of visiting it, will stay with me for a long time to come.

Traditionally, in these blog posts , I try to reflect in some way what is going on in the studio , in my head or in the wider world. The world is in an appalling state at the moment and I am not in Belfast,  I am in France for the second part of my residency at La Coupole. The thoughts in my head are pulled in all directions and so, for now, I will start with the positive news that just before I left for France, I found out that I was one of the recipients of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Major Individual Awards funded by the National Lottery. This award buys me time and space to develop a body of new work over the coming year and some of this work will be based on my research residency at La Coupole. As I work through the archive at La Coupole, it is not lost on me how the past persists into the present, how things transform from youthful imaginings of hope to more mature materialistions that have deadly consequences on a global scale. A boy dreams of  building a rocket to go the the moon and as a man he realises his dream  based on his knowledge of building ballistic missiles - the V2 'revenge weapon. Many of the people who were forced to assist his ambitions were expendable - forgotten - just as he forgot his past. Today, other men with other ambitions, dream of going to Mars, of colonising space, of re-writing their pasts to create a new narrative of themselves for the future. What is lost in the process? Why must those who have no choice be used as a pathway for someone else's idea of progress and profit? Moving forward and holding in balance light and shade, past and present,  I hope to create new work that will still be relevant in a fast changing world.

July is always a strange month here. Some people express their culture through the construction and deconstruction,  of huge pyres - bonfires - which are built over a period of months and then burned to the ground in the course of one evening. For me, these terms (construction and deconstruction) mean something different. They  are more than a means of critical analysis as they apply directly to the material world and to my 'creative culture' which is the making and un-making of objects in pursuit of understanding how things come together and apart. Inevitably, failure is a part of this process. There is something interesting about not giving up even when things don't work out. Something that materialises in an unexpected way is not a failure if you accept that its appearance is more appealing than preconceived ideas about its end point. Allowing these material failures to find their own way, to exist as they want to be, enables an evolution of forms which don't need to be finished to be understood. They don't need to be perfect to be appreciated. Aren't we all flawed, in our own way? I am happy to keep failing when exploration and experimentation are part of the process of being.