Holding Ground Where the Wood Lands is a two-channel film installation shot in Portmarnock, Co. Dublin, the artists childhood home place. The area, once part of a vast estate retains traces of a faded colonial atmosphere, where open fields, overgrown ponds and roaming peacocks sit alongside the gradual encroachment of suburbia.
Returning to this site, the work adopts an ethnographic sensibility, engaging with these layered histories while collaborating with a group of young men. The film follows them at a transitional moment in their lives on the threshold of adulthood.
Combining documentary approaches with the constructed atmospherics of a staged read through the multi screen work shifts between observational and performative registers. In doing so, it opens up a space where the boundaries between the real and the imagined become porous, allowing alternate narratives and forms of meaning to emerge.
Amharc Fhine Gall (Fingal Gaze) is an annual exhibition supported by Fingal County Council’s Arts Office in collaboration with Draíocht, established in 2004 as a platform for visual artists from, or living in, Fingal.
Link to essay by Joanne Laws:
Becoming Visible – Joanne Laws
Performers – Jack Kelly, Patrick O Sullivan, Tadgh Harte, Garbhan Healy, Jack D Kelly
Cameraman – Michael Kelly
Editor- Yvonne Mc Guinness and Michael Kelly
Sound – Greg Dunn
Grade – Michael Higgins
Sound Mix – Bob Jackson
Production Assistant – Gabriel Mc Guinness
