What Matter / Cén t-údar

Noah Rose’s work is rooted in a desire to understand, evaluate and find new connections between the past and present, across geopolitical boundaries and different cultural, linguistic, political or religious traditions. In the present exhibition, Rose explores the power of stones as markers of cultural memory written into the land and as a repository of the language and words we use to signify and emplace, power and commemoration.

Working with the material qualities of local quarried stone and contemplating the vast geological time of its formation the artist performs a number of translations in situating the work. These usually start as in-situ drawings and texts inspired by the artist’s research at a number of key symbolic sites, memorials and megalithic tombs found across North Leitrim. Sensory impressions become etched or carved into metal or stone shifting from one medium or language into another subtly changing the form and sentiment of the original.

Words also enter translation, for example when the artist chooses to translate the Proclamation of the Irish Republic into Catalan or where the English version of a poem written by the artists entitled ‘What Matter’ is translated into the Irish and then carved in Clo Gaelach (Gaelic script) into untreated field limestone for the central feature of the exhibition – a celtic spiral structure evoking the close connection of indigenous culture and language to the meanings and patterns of the land. In the words of the artist:

Irish to me has always seemed beautiful but unknowable, the words so different, the sentence structures so odd, even the letterforms themselves so distinctive….I’ve started learning during my residency and although I’m only a beginner, I have begun to understand some of the ways it works and to understand something of the relationship between the language and the culture and history of this island.

Exhibition curated by Séan O'Reilly.