Artist Statement:

Currently my research practise is navigating a departure from the Land by exploring the ever-widening divide between traditional farming and contemporary industrialised agriculture. I grew up in what I fondly call, the Back Ass of Nowhere in Ireland. I spent some of my childhood on a pig farm as the eldest son of four sons, helping my parents until one day the farm burnt down. A traumatic event for a small farmer on the edge of Europe, so traumatic it is almost comical. This happened before it became impossible to ignore how ill-fitted, I would be to Rurality but happened after I had learned the older methods of farming. Systems and techniques which rely on what is to hand as a means to nourish. Cyclical and non-destructive practises. Working through text as markers of our departure, I am scared of the space we now exist in concerning the land/law-scape and the natural. Almost complete separated from it, I often feel we no longer have any want to turn back and care. How do we live in a country where butterflies are a rarity, yet the eco-Instagram accounts are in plenty? How nutrious are these eco-aesthetics? Will these accounts sustain us once the soil turns to dust?