| Issue 14 Artist's Statements |
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| Errol Forbes |
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| These photographs comprise a journey through the mountain landscape of Ireland. A discipline which demands close observation and a sympathy with the subject. |
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| All of the Irish mountains are easy to reach and explore yet remain largely unfrequented. Time spent exploring, absorbing and listening to the landscape will influence the photographer and result in a truer picture. We can record the beauty of the landscape, most importantly with our eyes and then with the camera. |
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| Patricia Lofgren |
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| These photographs are of some of the landmarks that gave me an idea of how far I was from home before I understood the concepts of minutes or miles. |
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| When I was very young I remember staring out the back window of our family car. I knew that when we passed the grey house on our left we would soon see the Christmas tree farm and make a right onto West Kerley Corners Road. We would pass Mr. Rockefeller's house and I knew when I saw the William's pond on the right my house would be staring back at me from the top of the hill. |
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| These images are extremely personal but, at the same time universal. Everyone that has had a home can probably draw a map of familiar places on their way home. These places, that I grew up with, were so burned into my mind that when I was photographing them I had trouble remembering how old I was. I did not have to make too much of a choice of what to photograph. It was more of just lining up the image already in my mind with the back of the camera. |
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| Florian Merkel |
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| These are from 40 photographs, I shot from driving car in the area of German Democratic Republic between August 1988 and March 1989. The title is Unterwegs (On the road). |
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| Phil Martin |
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| Hen Brydain. The Standing Stones and Ceremonial Sites of the Modern Era. Several years ago, as I drove around South Wales, I became aware of large stones standing on the edges of several new motorway junctions and noticed their similarity to the prehistoric stone circles and menhirs that are part of the stock in trade of the romantic landscape artist. These ancient stones have also attracted the attention of a large number of photographers, including Bill Brandt, Paul Caponigro and Fay Godwin and it occurred to me that these modern monuments could be photographed in a manner that would offer a critical response to their pastoralist vision. I also noted other monuments within Wales, that bear an even closer resemblance to ancient stone circles, the Gorsedd Stones erected for the ceremonies of the Welsh National Eisteddfod. These artificial stone circles represent the continuity of a tradition invented by the Welsh radical lolo Morganwg in 1792 and are used for the crowning of the Chief Bard. After the eisteddfod the stones are left in-situ and remain as a memorial to the event as it travels throughout the country. I soon realised that the similarity of these modem monuments to their prehistoric prototypes was not coincidental but intentional, both are used to suggest the notion of an ancient Brythonic, Celtic root to modern Welsh culture. It was also interesting to note that in the numerous conversations I had whilst trying to locate the sites of the Gorsedd Stones, many people often assumed that they were genuine ancient monuments. The purpose of these images is twofold, firstly as a critical response to the aforementioned romantic pastoralist reading of the genuine ancient monuments and secondly, I wish to question the role of these modern imitations within contemporary Welsh culture. To question why as we rapidly approach the millennium, do we in Wales still build monuments that hark back over 2000 years to a dim and distant prehistory, a mythical past that some have described as the "Celtic Twilight". |
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| Phil Martin's work will be on show at Swansea Arts Workshop Gallery, Maritime Quarter, Swansea, 12th September - 31st October 1998. |
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| Martin Yelverton |
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| Cheapside EC2 is situated in one of the oldest parts of the City of London, it runs from the Bank of England to St. Paul's Cathedral. The photographs were taken on Cheapside and Moorgate between April and August 1996. |
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| The photographs are in one sense a documentation of this area - Through the images, representations of a culture at a point in history. There is an attempt in this work to explore the cultural implications of representation, particularly in relation to colonialism - how control is created through representation or how representation can control or fix a culture. |
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| David Robinson |
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| The images are extracts from an ongoing piece of work entitled 'Beyond Division' and is largely based within Northern Ireland, Germany and some other bordering European locations. |
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| Paddy McCabe |
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| Having taken over twenty five years to complete the Grand Canal was officially opened in 1805. It extends from Ringsend at the port of Dublin to Shannon Harbour and covers a total of 82 miles with 43 locks. The canal has a long tradition of use by swimmers in the summer months. Very little documentation exists of this and the project was started in 1988 to correct that deficit. |
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| Caroline Molloy |
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| Troubles thoughts is a multi-media piece made whilst on residency at Flaxart studios, Belfast. The work deals with the issue of female identity within Northern Ireland, by exploring different women's individual experiences of the troubles. Whilst the work is not anthropological it does offer a very human insight into the complexity of living within a pluralist Northern Ireland; challenging stereotypical images of existing within a society at conflict. The sound and photographic installation will open at the Old Museum Art Centre, Belfast on March 4th, to coincide with International Women's Day. It will continue March 28th. |
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