JULY 2021
01-18
I took these six photos between 2016 and 2020 in various squats around D7 most of which I lived in. Each is paired with a poem which I wrote during the course of the residency. Each poem responds specifically to the image it is paired with, while attempting to highlight a basic need which existed underneath often utopian sentiment.
The image for this poem was taken in a room I lived in in one of the longest running squats in Dublin. Built in the 1870s, the building has no real foundation and the muck of ages was clearly visible whenever we had cause to lift the floorboards. Whenever there was heavy rainfall, the cracks between the bricks leaked water. The poem interrogates the mirrored relationship between lack of physical base and the fragile conceptual structures which grow out of such a lived experience.
Superstructure Seeks Base
The image for this poem was taken in a room I lived in in one of the longest running squats in Dublin. Built in the 1870s, the building has no real foundation and the muck of ages was clearly visible whenever we had cause to lift the floorboards. Whenever there was heavy rainfall, the cracks between the bricks leaked water. The poem interrogates the mirrored relationship between lack of physical base and the fragile conceptual structures which grow out of such a lived experience.
The Least
we Could Ask for
This photo was taken in the same room as “Superstructure Seeks Base”. It depicts a mare’s skull which I had found in the shed of the squat and spent a day boiling in a wheelbarrow with a turf fire beneath to remove any remaining gristle. Partially visible in the image is a Taijitu painted in Indian Ink on the mare’s skull, this depiction of the Taoist cosmology makes reference to the “Old man loses his horse” story of the tradition. The poem is a theological self-reflection on this morbid altar piece and the many others like it.
Where Plants Wouldn’t Grow
I took this photo, as the poem suggests, in a concrete shed I spent the guts of a year living in. The picture was taken just after I had angle ground through the corrugated metal roof which had prevented natural light from entering my room for the previous six months. The poem expands on this moment of revealed beauty which had inspired me to grab my camera in the first place. Even with the shoddily siliconed on perspex skylight, there was never enough sun for a plant to survive in this room.
Give Me Back My Wasted Ears
This photo was taken the day before an injunction came into force at my first squat. The various layers of graffiti captures the transition between hopeful squatters painting intricate pieces where they live to a group of squatters who know they have already lost and have only a few short days to make what mark they can before the heavies arrive. The poem explicates the long term effects of repeatedly living under such siege conditions and the attachments one can form to them.
Why Were Questions Less Rhetorical then?
This photo was taken in a squatted apartment above an old abandoned florist. Originally this photo was taken as a matter of personal record rather than an ‘art shot’. We had just started this new squat and my dole had finally come in, not only did the reasonable course of action seem to be buying six bottles of wine I felt the urge to photograph them as if to reassure a future self “look you once had this much wine.” If you are like me you can probably calculate that this much Revero would have cost twenty-four quid. The poem probes these deeply addictive tendencies and the thought patterns they form.
