Darn Thorn

This research and practice revolves around contemporary and historical issues surrounding the genre of landscape in art, specifically using the landscape as a signifier for trauma and violence. Primarily using photography and lens-based media, and more recently time-based media such as cine film, video, audio and lighting, my works are typically resolved as installations. By employing production methods from commercial advertising and print I call the materiality of fine art print into question.

Previous projects such as Arcadia in Grey (2015) and Acadia in Particular (2016) have prefigured the residency at LSC. I have focused on regional locales and considered contextual environmental factors as well as social history, having explored romantic notions of rural Cork and its city dwellers and remnants of the French Acadian culture erased by British settlers in Canada.

The residency provides time to develop experimental printing techniques and photochemical outcomes, utilising local plant and mineral sources. This undertaking will reference 19th-century photography techniques and processes that used toxic mercury vapours which were replaced by those that used silver, salt or egg white. The purpose of the residency will be to develop techniques that I can use in the future to reduce the environmental impact of my practice.