Nostalgia /Definition - The notion of returning home from the Greek word Nostras suggest
a returning and also sadness.
The word is surprisingly new and termed first as a condition or more correctly a state resulting in numerous side effects. First termed for Swiss soldiers fighting abroad who showed no signs of physical wounds. It was a mental condition brought on from being away from home and suffering a deep aching sadness the resulting stress manifested in physical side effects.
A lot of this this work originates from my own experiences of nostalgia after the sudden death of my mother many years ago. Although at the time I wasn't aware of what nostalgia actually was. I thought I was a warm FUZZINESS of times gone by and wanting to return to those times.
Nostalgia is much more complicated than that and changes not just within ourselves but universally the meaning of the word is changing as we begin to understand more about ourselves.
When Luke Kelly sang about the 'Rare oul times ' my mother was quick to add that there was nothing nostalgic about them. The times were tough and people suffered, maybe it's more to do with time passing and the need to map it as a person going through it. Dublin In The Rare Old Times - Luke Kelly - YouTube
The house became a metaphor through drawings and thinking about things that had happened. Mostly good but dark times too but always moving forward that's the way we were BROUGHT UP. The handkerchief and thorns relate to martyrs and sacrifice.
The thorn branches bending under the stress as the house marches blindly forward. There are buds of green though, even in the darkest of times there is humour and life in my family.
When we are 'inside' some grief or grave difficulty between ourselves or in your own family the experience is very different to what an onlooker sees. They might feel sympathy and really the last thing anybody wants is sympathy. I remember at a very young age, I think we were eleven and my friends mother died. Myself and the other best had absolutely no way of understanding the other friends emotions. We tried to discuss what happens after your dead with not much success but I do remember the sullen and dark atmosphere in his house forever after. In the eighties in Ireland for the majority of people emotions were things you just had to live with an MOVE ON.
Brené Brown on Empathy vs Sympathy - YouTube
The estate was on the edge of wilderness and when you jumped over the wall at the end of the row there was were hay fields and vegetation until Marley park or Marley estate. The contrast was stark, from beautiful wild greenery to pebble dash and bare concrete. There were no trees on the streets and few cars in our estate which added to the greyness and even the roads were poured concrete not tarmac then. A lot of people had moved from the city centre to what must have seemed like the final frontier, the nearest shopping was H. Williams about two kilometres away.
I woke up one night with my legs aching for some reason and I couldn't sleep. My sister who was eleven years older than I tore up a sheet into strips and tied some around my legs. After I could feel the bandages strapped around my legs more than the aching and I fell back asleep.
When I was very young I remember spending a lot of time at home bored while my brothers and sisters were at school. I was quite sickly and sensitive as a kid and I had problems with asthma, I remember the cold touch of the doctors stethoscope on my chest. The miserable days looking out at the rain in the suburbs but enjoying the comfort of home and the smell of warm detergent and steam as my mother ironed the clothes while watching T.V
Rain in the suburbs 2005- 2010 -Concrete, plaster, resin, and steel.
Irish Concrete Sculpture Award 2011
This sculpture was an endeavour. I began mapping it out from my bedroom in 356 SCR, first of all drawing it out full size on paper. Over time I improved the piece a little and constructed a support for the back that makes it easier to mount. This was for the SWAB art fair in Barcelona in 2013. I made vina moulds and cast every plaster and concrete mould individually. I made the incomplete moulds by filling the negative part with clay and then covering the clay part in vaseline.
Each plaster cast was sanded smooth, painted in an undercoat and finally finished in a domestic paint gloss. The hang individually so as to lighten the overall look of the work. The rain drops were sculpted in clay then cast in plaster, sanded and carved a little more and then vina moulds were made. I then made cast of the drops in clear resin which were then sanded starting at 120 grain up to 1500 to get a brilliant clear finish. Each resin drop is suspended from the back support using specifically made stainless steel braces.
I wanted to convey the contrast between the bare concrete and a clean crisp gloss finish. The top part of the walls in peoples gardens would sometimes be painted usually in a gloss finish to protect against the harsh winter rain and wind. A elegant attempt to portray the cosiness of inside on the outside.
These corporation houses are a geometric structure, well conceived and 180,000 were built between 1941-60. Flags never gave me any sense of pride but this really did, an incredible achievement for a country stricken in division and poverty had the ability to give dignity to it's working poor.
A century of housing: How the State built Ireland’s homes – The Irish Times
Title - A swell in the ocean - Composition - 2023 \ charcoal on concrete. H x W --- 110 x 230 cm
The piece above on concrete, I have changed many times. I really like the medium on concrete although it's not very practical for storage or transportation. Presently the bare are is painted a sky blue which when I have a chance I'll remove. I'm getting there with this piece though.
The theme of the ocean ran through other sculptures aswell. I remember the morning when I got the message to go to James Hospital. It was my last day teaching and I had brought the students out to the cinema, when I left the cinema I had 57 missed calls. I met the rest of my family at the hospital and they gave us tea and everything changed.
My two brothers and I went to the shopping centre to get stuff to make sandwiches for people calling to the house. A surreal experience where the whole ground below you has been rocked and your reality will never be the same. Time for me seemed like the ocean stretching and then pulling together and then crashing like waves, and repeating and we were like a resonance within it. The physical side of my mother had disappeared but her resonance would be eternally in the ocean and there somehow we would met again.
I remember also when I was 12 or so I had a series of dreams about the sea, the first one was shortly after my best friend went to a different school and really never saw each other then. I began to relate these dreams to separation and loss. The dreams were not of drowning but more being disconnected and floating. They would start off on dry land and everything would slowly be immersed in water filling up.
These dreams came back to me when I moved home in 2003 maybe unconsciously I made the connection of loss again with my Mother, who knows ? But I began to have similar dreams to the ocean and immersion.
At the time the time I was also reading a lot of graphic novels which became a great resource of inspiration and solace. Writers such as Chris Weir, Charles Burns and Edward Gorey and a multitude of others. I seemed to be drawn to the works of graphic novelists that at a later date I would realise had gone through similar senses of loss like Seth in 'It's a life good if you don't weaken' or Chris Weir in Quimby Mouse. I still love the style in the illustrations of Edward Gorey and used this a little bit especially when drawing the sea.
I'd stick on music or listen to Donal Dineen on the radio -
Donal Dineen Ain't Talking No Disco - YouTube It was a type of obsessive compulsive behaviour with the matches but again it relates to memories of shellacked wood and also it was a affordable way to get a good finish. Matches also enabled me to manipulate the surface and create an EFFECT of fluidity. The large sculptures were constructed and I never knew how long they would take to finish. It's like they exist in a parallel universe and they have to match in this universe, I physically work through trial and error and finally if I am very luck I discover the piece. I recognize the narrative after the piece is almost complete.
Title - ' Like the ocean' - 2006 - 2018 -- Dimensions - H x W x D -
Medium - Matches, wood, varnish, concrete , fiberglass and resin
Previous to this sculpture I had another two and a half meters by two meters. The work was built up on a plaster and wire mesh form based on sketches and images of the ocean. I wanted to convey the idea of a wave running fluidly through something that normally we perceive as being solid in this case wood. These pieces were formed using wire mesh, cloth mesh, plaster and covered in thousands and thousands of matches. It is intricate work in every step of the process, applying, filling in, sanding and varnishing and sanding the shellac off again and applying again and again..
The sea is something terrifying to me. It's the closest thing I can think of that's physical
but has a sense of the infinite, it's tides being pulled by the moon
and it's waves and rhythm resounding the beats of life since the
beginning of life on earth. It's oceans are other universes we know very little about. This sense of divinity is like a bridge to the afterlife.
We domesticate our lives with comforts and furniture and with all things that will be washed away sometime in the future. We tell stories in our maths, cultures and art all in an effort to map our time here, to leave our mark and show that we had significance.
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