1983

A number of years ago now I started using thorns in drawings, it started as an association for me to sacrifice or endurance of some sort. This symbolisim was usually sown in with my family home where the cubic object of the house represents a collective of people. In this sculpture I imagined a form walking always forward in a blind belief in something showing the scares of sacrifice on it´s elevated thorn branch legs and somewhat shabby exterior, like Arnold Schwarzenegger at the end of Terminator 2.

To me materials are also part of the narrative especially the poured concrete, it's something I associate to the 1970's and 80's it seemed to be omnipresent. The post modern architecture in all it's beauty and brutality mixed with the oil crises of the seventies and the recession of the eighties.Strangely I now have a fondness for theses things I hated and that depressed me then I now see the great diversity, functionality and aesthetic of theses buildings and houses from those decades. 

With some sculptures I used just the thorns this idea came to me after making a little piece for the SWAB art fair in Barcelona in 2013. Each artist was given an indentical 8" toy which they had to decorate in some , put their stamp on it so to speak.

I thouht of an electric bear like the old cartoons when the character gets a shock. I liked the contrary nature of the bear also , we feel a toy bear should be soft and cuddly but this is the opposite hard and abrasive. Texture is really important to me in sculptures often more important than the form. I want a piece to draw the viewer into the work to contemplate and investigate the sculpture further, to scrutinize the piece and for this reason the thorns as a medium really caught me.

My work is physical trial and error and the majority of what I have made I have thrown away or kept for many years returning to it again and again in an attempt to get to that stage where I feel it´s complete. After trying many times to use this material in a work I came back to the year 1983. I remembered we would go to the scout meetings in Rathmines and after to the chipper and if you could afford it play space invaders. 


                                                                                

Generally speaking 1983 for me was rarely space invaders, it was a dull and depressing year of Northern Ireland television and strikes, gray days and bustops in Monahon on the way to Belfast or Derry. 

The mounting tension over the last six or seven years in Spain about Catalonia brought back recollections of the north, the tribalism and tension in the air. Obviously I  don't believe in a way, shape or form the situation here  will ever get to the same level as the 'Troubles' in Ireland. For five years my wife and a group of friends went to the Pimavera Music Festival in Barcelona from 2011 until 2016 and I noticed every year that there were more and more flags either Catalan or Spanish hanging out of windows or balconies. 

Truthfully it made me feel a bit sick in my stomach, in my experience whenever you begin to see more national flags it's bad news,very rarely it's a genuine celebration of the flag itself not when it represents a country. It's a way of marking your territory. 

Resin -  blastic bullet with the same dimensions as the real thing - 2016

Getting back to the year 1983, I remember for a long time in the drawer below the cutlery drawer in the kitchen there was a rubber bullet which had writing on it in a Celtic style. I 

can´t remember all that it said but the beginning was ´This bullet bullet was fired on the streets of Derry in 1971 something, something... it struck that it was just lying around there for years. It´s origin in violence wrapped in stories of suffering and then knocking around the drawer with batteries, lighters, clothes pegs, some change etc..