The Lost Acre

In Irish folklore, ‘the lost acre’ refers to an area in the landscape where you can be lead astray. This enchantment can last for several hours during which your time is unaccounted for and familiar places may look different. In the Irish language the phenomenon is known as Fóidin Mearbhaill, or treacherous soil. Often, a person might hear their name called or see someone they thought they knew and follow, only to be found hours or days or even weeks later with no memory of how they came to be miles away from where they should be.

Incorporating video, sculpture, painting, collage, and photography McMorrow’s exhibition appropriates archival landscape imagery and objects in a series of other-worldy encounters where the everyday is haunted by memory, anxiety and humour. Found materials such as wood, stone and lichen reference the passing of time whilst souvenirs from charity shops often work as surfaces to paintings that subtly shift the meaning of the original.

The video work is a recording of studio experiments. Drawing on the aesthetics of science fiction films and nature documentaries McMorrow uses materials like wax, ice, and jelly to invent a world where the familiar becomes strange. The film seeks to explore the forces that influence The Lost Acre phenomena and its combination of sensory and surreal perception.

Exhibition curated by Séan O'Reilly.