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.

I am back at home after an amazing initial visit to La Coupole as part of the Art of Remembrance project. It will take some time to process all of the things I experienced there from the archives, to the planetarium, to the technical museum and of course the architecture of the tunnels and the dome itself. I am always intrigued by the visible traces of history left, literally in this case, in the walls. One can still see in detail the grain of the planks of wood used as shuttering to hold poured concrete and in the tunnels the hammer marks from intense excavations. Forced labour was used throughout the site. Through the  use of VR and other modern technologies, one can follow each stage of the  journey of the missiles as they are moved throughout the site from the main entrance to the launch bay and wonder at the scale of this military industrial complex. History, memory, reality and imagination are brought together in a way that always acknowleges the human cost of this enterprise which not only changed the physical landscape of its locality but also severely impacted the lives of those who lived in and around it. Without knowing the outcome of my ongoing research, I hope I can play a part in bringing some of these forgotten stories into the present. As we know, forced labour, unspeakable cruelty and unchecked megalomania are not in the past. They are very much of the present moment. We should all hope they are not part of our future. 

Exciting news! This summer I will be artist in residence at La Coupole, France, as part of the Art of Rembrance project which " bridges contemporary art with the history of World War II, offering a platform for creative dialogue about the past". I was one of four artists chosen and each of us will  work at a specific site of memory in France, Italy, Poland and Belgium. I was particuarly interested in La Coupole as (now restored) it houses a museum, an archive and a plantetarium as well as underground tunnels which are evidence of its dark history  and those who were forced to work there during WW2. The works created during each of the residencies  will form a traveling exhibition that will connect audiences across Europe to the diverse interpretations of WWII memory. Being at La Coupole will  enable me to continue a line of creative thought which entangles monumental structures with deep space as part of my interest in contemporary commemorative practice. It also allows me to reflect on  the weaponisation of space itself and how it is vulnerable to the ambitions of a  few powerful  men whose rocket building says much about their  vision of themselves. It's a lot to process and I look forward to getting started! For anyone who wants to know more about the Art of Remembrance Project, see:https://www.art-of-remembrance.eu/about/ 
and for La Coupole: /lacoupole-france.com/en/

This month I was mostly on the move from Malaga, to Gibraltar to Tanger and back to Malaga again. This entailed the use of planes, buses, grand-taxis and ferries, as well as a lot of walking. One of the things that struck me most, when sailing in and out of Algeciras (Spain) and Port Med (Tanger) was the omni-presence of massive ships carrying shipping containers. What's in them? Where are they going and who is going to receive them? The uniformity in scale and shape of these containers no doubt belies their contents and it begs the question why do we need so much stuff and why does this stuff need to be transported around the world? At home, I can buy avacadoes from Peru and asparagus from Mexico (if I choose to do so). I can also buy blueberries from Morrocco so it felt strange to be in Morrocco and actually buy the blueberries that were produced there. So much stuff and so much choice. Unlike shipping containers, people come in all shapes and sizes but we probably all want the same thing - comfort, safety and enough to money to eat and pay bills. Some people have no choice but to remain in their locale, while others (like me) are fortunate enough to have choices. How do my choices as a consumer and a tourist impact on those who produce the stuff that I  decide I need? Moving forward, powerless against those individuals whose personal wealth is that of a nation, I am going to be more conscious of my choices, in all things.

I was delighted to receive the news this month that I was one of the six winners of the Homiens Art Prize for Summer 2024. The Homiens  Art Prize is an international, non-acquisitive art prize open to all artists and art forms. It celebrates artists across all media, exhibiting their art online where it is viewed by artists and collectors in the United States and throughout the world. The work is selected by a panel of jurors and each round 6 winning artists are chosen.
The judges said of my work “ Gail eschews the sectarian tensions associated with her subject, the Troubles, by devising an ameliorative visual language: One that is suggestive of reverence and peace, without appealing in any identifiable way to a specific ideology. Instead of using colour to forge connection and create meaning, Ritchie uses symbols with a shared and well-established meaning (a wreath, for example) which precedes the Troubles, and avoids reference to more detailed symbols recognizably associated with either side of the conflict”.
Not only did it feel like a validation to win such a prestigous prize, it felt quite unusual and welcome to receive detailed feedback on the selection process from the judges. General feedback was made available to all those who had submitted work and it was a very generous enterprize on their part. Often, work goes out into a void and the effort one puts in to applications is often in direct contrast to the work that goes into the response once it has been received. So horrah for Homiens! More of the same please. For more information see:
homiens.com/the-homiens-art-prize-summer-2024/

Nothing stays the same for ever. This is not always a bad thing because it means that everything is fluid and changing, nothing is fixed. Just as a shadow seems to cast its darkness over us all, so too light will come and expose the shadow's immateriality for what it is - nothing. A mere bogeyman, the smoke reflected in a mirror. There will always be times when we can step out of the shade and into our own light. Of course, this way of thinking could be analogous to many things; the dark state of global politics right now, the doomsday clock moving one second closer to midnight, from nineteen to eighteen, and a general feeling of hopelessness as it seems the light will never come. Surely we are all desperate for sunlight to stream in to cob-webbed corners and into corrupted corridors of power? I know I am. Change is both good and bad, depending on how you view it. At QSS, we are facing change in 2025. Another move looms on the horizon. I thought about this earlier when I stood on the roof of our studios, looking at the view over East Belfast towards the shipyard and Cave Hill. It's winter and it's cold; but it is also bright and sunny. I chose to stand in that sunlight and imagine change as a good thing; a move into the light. I hope, wherever you are, the sun is shining.

At the start of December we said our goodbyes to Big Max, pictured above. I write this post four weeks to the day after he left us and two plus years after he first came to stay. December seems to be a time of beginnings and endings; the end of one year and the start of another;  one is  full of memories , the other full of hopes and dreams. The solstice marks the longest night. Slowly and incrementally the days begin to stretch and the darkness, while not in retreat, starts to delay its appearance by minutes every day. So much has been said and written about time and loss, less about what it means to live and die well when the time comes to go. Max lived well when he was with us and his last years were full of love and small adventures. Now he is gone, I seem to have a lot of time of my hands but I can use it to reflect on what we can learn from our more than human friends - stoicism, acceptance, letting go of the past and living fully in the moment, playing even when you are old and taking pleasure in the smallest of things. As we go towards  2025, ready to meet all that is known and unknown in the world, I hope we can all be more Max. I know I will try to be. Happy New Year all!

As part of our QSS 40th Anniversary celebrations, studio member Tim Millen kindly documented each of us in our respective studios, doing what we do. These images were used across social media to highlight all the activities taking place from now until Christmas and include not just the exhibition across two galleries but also talks, workshops and open studio days all of which are open to the public. My contribution was in the form of an essay for the exhibition catalogue. It was an opportunity to reflect (after Virginia Woolf) on what it means to have a studio (or room) of one's own during times of economic and political uncertainty. Next month, I will be part of a panel discussion which will interrogate the relevance of art in the present moment and how doing what we do impacts/collides with/or refuses contemporary geo-political, societal and environmental events. More on this in November. For now, if you are interested in any of our upcoming events, visit www.queenstreetstudios.net/we-are-qss-at-40/ and join in the celebrations! You can read my essay via the PDF link below.