Façadier (2024-present)
This is a preview of new work initially developed while on residency at Centre Culturel Irlandais (Paris) in November 2024. My intention is to make new work exploring the overlap of my previous structural engineering background, my photographic practice and my experience of urban spaces.
As an engineer I designed many buildings and have an innate understanding of the structures and forces within them. This gives me a very specific skillset and an eye for detail that enhances my photographic inquiry and opportunities for metaphorical exploration of the built environment, and the tangible and intangible elements that constitute it.
While making the initial work in Paris it felt simultaneously personal and political. A loose concept relating to a façade began to interest me; visually, metaphorically and symbolically. My initial work is primarily photographic complimented with sound, text, drawing and scans of found objects. This work is in the early developmental stage and a work in progress. I’ve adopted the working title ‘Façadier’ which is a French word translating as facade maker.
Going forward the work will investigate and respond to the visible and unseen systems and structures we live within using the built environment as a vehicle to explore this. The core concept, narrative and subtext for this new work need to be refined and will evolve based on my future encounters with urban landscapes.
Going forward I intend to make work in Dublin and hopefully undertake a residency in another European urban centre in 2027 to develop and refine the work further.
“I’m tired but the city is awake, always awake. I feel anxious but I’m unsure if the city feels the same. Some spaces hold a resonance. Something permeates from behind the facade, surfaces reflect back feelings; whispers that feel familiar but remain somehow subtle and vague. Something has awoken in me. I feel a sense of something old but young. Something new but known from before.”
“The dripping tap once an annoyance now brings familiarity as I sit in my studio gazing out at the chestnut trees holding onto the last of their leaves. The luxury of a view well received. I sit and look most days. I listen, I think, I draw, I think more. I’m not quite here but I’m here enough. The spirit and sounds of the city stir a new sense, something to come.”
