Slips and Wishes

Slips and Wishes

This work grapples borders: of orientation and surface, window and water, the boundary between worlds and the visible and obscured. Moving through a series of landscapes; a pond and window in Montreal, a river in Co.Cork and the coastline of Co.Dublin, a watery reaching is presented, alongside a personal history of emigration, an alternative travelogue.
This work stems from researching old rural wells in the Duchas Schools Collection, a collection of folklore compiled by schoolchildren in Ireland in the 1930s. One specific well roots this work, St.James Well, Co.Sligo. This well is near to where my grandmother was born, in the rural townland of Geevagh. Geevagh, meaning “the windy”, describes a climatic feature of the area. This well has always been a focal site in my knowledge of my history. The clay surrounding the water of this well is believed to be deeply healing. I attempt to grasp, conjure and enter this ancestral space as I circle and orientate other watery and climate-shifting landscapes.

Slips and Wishes, moving image with sound and embedded documents and watercolours, 07:26, 2023.

Filmed in Quebec, Canada, Cork and Dublin, Ireland.

Narrated by the artist and Alexandra Sirard.