A first visit

A drive out to Coillte land, a Forest plantation near a reservoir called Farran woods in Cork County. A first visit  is unique.  Movement into the unknown. I cannot know what is going to be found. I have ideas, limitations of what I think (and know) is possible, but ultimately every turn around a corner has a newness absent when crossing the ground again.

Both stimulating and perplexing simultaneously because of the expectation of finding something that will add to this project, and the fact that beyond a general approach in the project, overall there is as yet no strategy evolving on this new site.

In essence I have no specific memory of this place, no identity is formed. The only references I have to go on are not spatially specific or temporally fixed, but associations built on responses to stimuli of similar engagements in other places. These are responded to in the making of work, but I am also influenced by the task I have set myself of finding differences in woodlands to the elements I have already encountered and made work about. The idea of difference is what motivated me to go to a forestry plantation, as opposed to the deciduous woodlands  I have already investigated.

Tree-felled #1 Version #1

 Walking into a new site, the first problem is when to start working? I never quite know, sometimes it's an obvious stimuli, some sign of change or a curious ambiguity that is a combination of my state of awareness and the elements in the environment simultaneously, intuitively, cohering. This time there was no sudden decision to make a work. Hence the perplexity I experienced. In this case the environment was so different to what I had encountered before. Harvesting of timber was evident all around, so much so that it was difficult to decide on a specific scene to start with. In the end I just walked off the path and made the work above, with little confidence of it's success. This was the beginning of a few works on the day that I had little confidence in, and was pleasantly surprised with the results;

Tree-felled # 3 Version #1

Tree-felled #6 version #1

 The activity of harvesting provides a new encounter, an obvious sign of the cultural use of woodland that has so far been absent from In flux. The fact that the activity is recent  lends a sense of recentness in the resulting works, even when, after the passage of time, it will no longer be a recent event in the landscape. This new event-ness will  still be, or be stilled, within the works. It will be interesting when I return what the effect of time-lapse of these scenes will have on this newness, will it be diminished (in the context of a body of work) or continue to resonate?

In addition to these tree-felled works (as opposed to the tree-fall series started  earlier) there were two works that I made because of the scenes resonances with earlier work at other sites. In this case it is not difference and newness at work, but similarity that was the motivating factor;

The right angles #1 Version #1

This work resonated with the earlier work;

Blue Land Version # 1

Both of these works offer a sense of ambiguity that leaves open questions for the viewer of a work, I know little of what has or is occurring in both these cases. In this sense the openness allows the viewer to become an interpretive participant in a similar way to my own perplexity on encountering such ambiguity in the field.

Further visits to the above will allow for change, but not resolution of the content of the scene. I see no reason to achieve this resolution. Knowing what is going on or has gone on with everything one encounters in environments is never the case. Understanding is subjective and the lack of understanding, or interpreting is a normal state, thereby it is an intention of mine, in utilising such ambiguities to bring this to the fore in the works, and to achieve some empathy with my audience.

The second work is less ambiguous;

Hut #1 Version #1

This reminded me of the series The cage (see earlier posting below). More obviously a sign of change, as the hut has collapsed. A further visit here is planned.

A strategy is emergent here, there are areas in this wood as yet unvisited or visited and not worked in. Returns to the scenes already encountered will be made for time-lapse work to be undertaken. I noticed two elements worth considering - but with techniques that offer a departure from the present method. Tree stumps and stones. Increasingly I am seeking way of advancing and enhancing this research with new approaches whilst simultaneously keeping within a structure, or strategy that forms In Flux.