Cork Harbour Horizons were taken from the same spot, looking out towards the mouth of Cork Harbour, at the same time each day over six months in 2014. They are part of the research material for the Horizons project.











 

Immersion Series 2009-12 looks at our relationship with landscape. Inspired by German romantic painting, the photographs show that nature has become a landscape we both live in and are separate from, we are always tourists in our own and other lands. We engage with landscape through the use of cars, paths, paved viewing and visitor areas, this expresses a particular attitude towards our environment.








 

Teufelsberg is a man-made hill in Berlin, Germany, in the Grunewald locality of former West Berlin. It rises about eighty meters above the surrounding Teltow plateau, north of Berlin's Grunewald Forest. The hill is made of rubble and covers an under-construction Nazi military-technical college (Wehrtechnische Fakultät). During the Cold War, there was a U.S. listening station on the hill, Field Station Berlin.








 

Hinterland was inspired by 18th & 19th-century romantic painting and the controls exerted on society by military forces in Ireland at that time, the work uses the extremes of light and dark to expose a suppressed hysteria. The claustrophobic interior spaces of the forts, which almost shut out the light, are expressive of control. The images are suffocating and relentlessly dark, but not hopeless, there is a way out. Photographs from Charles Fort & Fort Davies in Cork Harbour were exhibited at Tom Barry's Bar 'Light Box' series of exhibitions in Cork in 2009 in association with the Cork Artists Collective.




 

Epicentre Project was a site-specific video and photography project exhibited as part of 'Fruitcakes and Furry Collars' exhibition at Bridge House, Skibbereen, West Cork 2009. It consisted of a montaged video and photographs with a moving image of a tornado, creating the illusion of a ghost-like presence in the spaces photographed and videoed. (also see videos)







 

We Must Follow the Circle was a series of photographs selected for the exhibition 'We Must Follow the Circle' at the Triskel Arts Centre 2007. The photographs were taken with a video camera in a stream below Kenilworth Castle, UK in July 2002 and features my son Daniel Murray, my cousins and local children. They are engaged in building a dame.

The exhibition was curated by Kitty Anderson and Gavin Delahunty and was an 'attempt to represent and interpret the diverse activity at Backwater Artists Group: a meeting place and a place to exchange ideas. Central to the exhibition was it's structural and lighting design in partnership with artist/architect Essica Kimberly'.
Backwater Artists Group

 

Myths exhibition looks at the idea of other worlds. Using a video camera the work is spontaneous in nature, nothing is staged, and the children are being themselves and often avoiding the process of being photographed. They inhabit a twilight zone of wooded landscapes, caught between stillness and movement, suggesting a sense of fragility and transience that childhood engenders. The photographs are mainly of my son Daniel Murray, but also include Theo and Noah Donnelly. Exhibited at the Alliance Française de Cork 2007.






 

Four Caravans were found on the dunes in Connemara, Co. Galway in 2004, one completely smashed. Exhibited as part of ArtTrail 2004 and 'When Flanders Failed' at The RHA Royal Hibernian Academy Gallery, Dublin 2011.












 

Skate-park was a documentation project. I was interested in exploring the different types public cultural spaces in Cork City, in an attempt to question why certain priorities are given to certain types of cultural spaces. This skate-park, the only one in Cork City, was dismantled in 2003 because it could not be insured. This was a digital video and photography project. With special thanks to Lulu Hecket.








 

The Iraq Room was made possible through a residency at Kunstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf, Germany in 2003. It was inspired by the idea of the ‘Museum’ as a symbolic tool for western colonial ambitions. The attendant paces the floor of the Gallery deep in thought repeating his steps again and again, creating a kind of spontaneous silent theatre with his chair and a potted palm, here the stage is 'The Iraq Room' at The Pergamon Museum in Berlin at the height of the war in Iraq April 2003. Exhibited as part of the 'Crawford Open 4' at The Crawford Art Gallery, Cork 2003.




 

Hunting Boxes photographs were taken on a video camera, in the woods near Wiepersdorf, Germany in 2003. Here I have documented a series of Hunting Boxes or 'Hochsitze' (Raised Hides) found in the woods near the former Stolzenhain Russian Nuclear Base. In this work, I am interested in exploring our relationship with nature and the landscape. This work explores the myth of representation and the idea of a romantic relationship with the landscape. For me the Hunting Boxes express our obsession with dominating nature, separating and positioning us in a paradoxical situation.
This work was made possible through a residency at Kunstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf through the Stiftung Kulturfonds 2003 and an Arts Council of Ireland residency award in 2002.
(also see projects)
 

Reinsdorf Airport photographs were taken on a video camera, at Reinsdorf Airport, near Wiepersdorf, Germany in 2003.
In this work, I am interested in our relationship with nature and landscape, here as the imagined aerial view, as represented by the airport. This work explores the myth of representation through the idea of a romantic relationship with the landscape.
This work was made possible through a residency at Kunstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf through the Stiftung Kulturfonds 2003 and an Arts Council of Ireland residency award in 2002.
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Stolzenhain Base photographs were taken using a video camera, at the former Stolzenhain Russian Nuclear Base, near Wiepersdorf, Germany in 2003. The base was abandoned in 1990 and in 2003 was used to store fertilizer. The gymnasium is the only building left standing today.
In this work I am interested in how our relationship with nature and landscape is a false construct of identification with historical cultural traditions, particularly landscape painting. This work explores the myth of representation and the idea of a failed romantic relationship with landscape.
This work was made possible through a residency at Kunstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf through the Stiftung Kulturfonds 2003 and an Arts Council of Ireland residency award 2002.
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Stolzenhain Windows photographs were taken using a video camera, at the former Stolzenhain Russian Nuclear Base, near Wiepersdorf, Germany in 2003. The base was abandoned in 1990 and in 2003 was used to store fertilizer. These buildings have since been demolished.
In this work, I am interested in how our relationship with nature and landscape is a construct of identification with historical cultural traditions, particularly landscape painting. This work explores the myths of representation and the idea of a romantic relationship with landscape in the face of a blatant militaristic reality.
This work was inspired by the woods and landscape around Wiepersdorf, Germany and was made possible through a residency at Kunstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf through the Stiftung Kulturfonds 2003 and an Arts Council of Ireland residency award in 2002.
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