Love Letters

Katie Holten’s work studies the entangled relationship between humans and nature. Her recent work investigates language and the crisis of representation as our species adapts to life in the Anthropocene. In Tree Alphabet she relinquishes the basic building blocks of language replacing all 26 letters of the Roman alphabet with trees. ‘A’ became an Apple tree, ‘B’ a Beech tree, ‘C’ a Cedar, etc. Holten also used the Tree Alphabet to make her critically acclaimed book About Trees (Brokem Dimanche Press, 2015). Her project at the Leitrim Sculpture Center continues these conversations creating an alphabetical planting palette, allowing the audience to write love letters with new fonts and exhibit these in the gallery. Other works include a series of drawings based on the Ogham alphabet and the flight of Swifts, whilst ‘Stone Alphabet’ (2016-ongoing) is an infinite series of drawings made with graphite, ink, stone and water. These alphabet projects start from a simple premise: can we create a language beyond the human? Holten believes there are ‘unconscious alphabets’ all around us waiting to be discovered. A recurring theme in all these conversations is the need for new stories - for ourselves, for our communities, and for our species, in order to address local as well as global problems, to engage in action, and to negotiate change.

Exhibition curated by Séan O'Reilly.