June - All things Airborne

Art work that is separated by time and space can connect in novel and unexpected ways.  "Big Albert" (left), was made in 1999 and it is curently on show at the Crawford Art Gallery , Cork* as part of an  exhibition called Menagerie. On the right, made just last week, is painting of a speculative memorial to be contained in an airship. It is shown against a background of marks left by blowing bubbles, and so it merges with another concept where breathing is a form of remembering. Big Albert is a large scale charcoal drawing ( 210 x 150 cm) of a pigeon carcass. It is one panel of a  triptych which  referenced the carnage of the First World War through the use of animal imagery.  The airship, or floating memorial, is based on a First World War example but it has been recontextualised by me to imagine how a memorial for the Northern Ireland Troubles need not be solid and fixed, but rather it might float and circulate, only landing when there is a request to see inside. The small scale painting (30 x 30 cm) contains a lot of big ideas but to me, it is not unfeasible, in that the airship could both be and contain a memorial. During the First World War there was a base for airships in Northern Ireland just outside the town of Larne. The mission of the crew was to look down to search the seas for the hidden threat of German U-Boats. Today, that which threatens us seems to come from the sky, and through the air, as an airborne virus we cannot seem to free ourselves from. In twenty years time, will the work I make then   connect to the works shown here? Will this future work be about  wars and political atmospheres, or the right to clean air without living in a bubble?
*Image courtesy of Crawford Art Gallery. Photography by Jed Niezgoda.  Other artist featured in shot: Joe Neeson and Tony O'Malley.