Gordon Farrell
Gordon Farrell graduated from Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dublin in 1998. Since then he has exhibited frequently in group & solo exhibitions in Ireland & abroad.
“To know nothing that happened before you were born is to remain forever a child”.
Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC).
Liquifying history and reorganising its remnants, I try to create images & objects by looking at the “essence” of things. I know in doing this the image will always fail in its infinite search for truth, but I also know in doing this I can witness the greatness & splendor of what images and objects can attain.
Developing the work from a number of sources, primarily literature from Social History, Art History, Mythology, Psychoanalysis and the one great ‘Constant’, the land itself, also involves a force that I cannot ignore & that is my preoccupation with the actual materials of art and the processes involved in making the Objet d’art. Using natural materials from the land like peat, clay, wood and stone, only enriches & ritualizes the processes involved, connecting & disconnecting, constructing & deconstructing materials, concepts and visual thought processes.
This exhibition is inspired from the Lebor Gabála Érenn (The Book of the Taking of Ireland) which is a loose collection of poems and prose narratives recounting the mythical origins and history of the Irish from the creation of the world down to the Middle Ages. “The Wooing of Étaín/Éadaoin”, is an early text of the Irish Mythological Cycle and is partly set in Ardagh hill , Longford. It tells of the lives and loves of Étaín, a beautiful mortal woman of the Ulaid, and her involvement with Midir of the Tuatha Dé Danann who lived in the sidh of Brí Léith (Ardagh hill).
