SOUTHERN CROSS is a critical response to the recent rapid
development witnessed in Ireland. Foreign investment has brought about
the largest economic transformation in the history of a country which
never experienced the industrial revolution. The work maps, through the
spaces of development and finance, the economic aspirations of a country
on the western periphery of Europe. It presents the face and landscape,
now described as the ’Celtic Tiger’, being transformed in response to
the migration of global capital.
site explores the transitory spaces between ‘what was’ and ‘what will
be’. The construction sites are the birthing grounds of the ‘new
Ireland’. The images are allegorical references to the effect of the
changing geography on society. Landscape images intersect with portraits
of the workers, charged with the responsibility of transforming the
landscape in the hope of fulfilling the desires of the society around
them.
As a counterpoint, prospect surveys the economic aspirations symbolised
by the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC). This European
location for half of the world’s largest banks and insurance companies,
the IFSC, is the first banking district in the history of the state.
With over 8,000 employees, located on a former dockland area of the
north inner city of Dublin, it generates between 60 - 70% of the
Republic’s wealth.
‘Places are centres of meaning’ (Kim Dovey, architectural theorist and
historian). prospect explores this meaning as it relates to the IFSC, a
flagship of global capital. The series consists of images of the
physical space and portraits of the young office workers, the new
‘physical labour’, inheriting the space from those who constructed it.
The IFSC is viewed as defining the ’new Ireland’.
Brought together under the multi-layered title, SOUTHERN CROSS, the
works combine both aesthetic and documentary impulses in a new mapping
of social geography. The images have been described as ’precise, fluid,
factual. They are also deeply - and strangely – beautiful’.
A full-colour publication accompanies the exhibition. It includes an
essay by Justin Carville, lecturer in Historical and Theoretical Studies
in Photography and poem by the writer and poet, Philip Casey.
The exhibition is presented in three sizes - 1m by 1m, 75cm by 75cm and
50cm by 50cm. All images are mounted and framed in aluminium. There are
28 images from the series (63 in total) produced for exhibition,
however, a smaller selection can also be presented depending on space
available and the nature of that space.
SOUTHERN CROSS was first commissioned by Gallery of Photography, Dublin,
Ireland.
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