Ireland's Burren region holds both exuberant wildness and the marks of millennia of human interventions. On my first day of exploration, I was struck by the formal similarity between the abundant blackberries and towering piles of silage bales, with their grouped units of shiny "globules," darkly-skinned membranes encasing potent, fermented food energy.
Over time these elements began to suggest a metaphorical relationship to the process of making art, in both the instinctual, impulsive sense, and in the rigors of concentrated practice.
Ferment: Process/Ferment: Potential (2021) as a temporary combined install.
Ferment: Process is a photographic series which pushes both forms from observation into abstraction.
Ferment: Potential is a sculptural meditation on our deepest creative force, a sometimes disquieting but always alluring inner self, which often feels dangerous to reach for. It is installed on the grounds of Burren College of Art, County Clare, Ireland.
