A Portrait: Lough Key by Anna Macleod & Padraig Cunningham

A Portrait: Lough Key
by Anna Macleod & Padraig Cunningham

Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment,
Denis Naughten
will officially launch the exhibition at
6pm, November 10th, 2017 at the Roscommon Arts Centre

Exhibition runs from:
10th November 2017 – 12th January 2018

Lough Key has been home to communities of humans for millennia, as a body of water it has functioned as a place of refuge and contemplation, as a trade route and economy, as a site for recreation and stability. The ecology of this body of water can be seen as a site of constant renewal, a waterway of connectivity between manmade and naturally occurring parcels of land dotted throughout the surface of the waters. In the communities that continue to live in the vicinity of this watery world, Lough Key commands huge, almost visceral, affection as a repository of memory, of time passed in aquatic suspension, as an intense emotional mirror of celestial and temporal bodies. The constant movement of the water, its undercurrents and surface tensions create a hypnotic dream world of interconnected realms of the states of water, as vapour, as liquid, as solid.

For this years’ iteration of the Park Project, commissioned artist Anna Macleod chose to work in collaboration with Boyle based artist Padraig Cunningham. They worked with community members to create a portrait of Lough Key as a time-scape through the life cycle of the Mayfly (order: Ephemeroptera) from the Greek, meaning ‘living a day’. A Portrait: Lough Key installation at Roscommon Art Centre explores the motif of the Mayfly as a portal to the complex reflective upside down worlds of this body of water, a delicate and vulnerable world of domesticity, constant flux and potential.

With many thanks to Paul Wynn, Colm Walsh, Damien Walsh and Danny Shanley of Lough Key Boat Tours.
Field underwater recordings with kind permission from Ciarán MacAoidh.

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About the Park Project
The Park Project takes on the form of a residency that allows an artist to occupy the spaces in and around Lough Key in Co. Roscommon, collecting history and exchanging knowledge that will inform their future work, while working within the historical and contemporary contexts of the site.

The Park Project was developed by curator Linda Shevlin and is supported by Roscommon Arts Centre & Roscommon County Council Arts Office.

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