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Local clay, found glass gallery installation for The Museum of Mythological Water Beasts at Ormston House. Limerick, Ireland. 2018.
Inspired by artefacts from the Limerick City Museum and the geophysical traces of time and flow found in the river itself as starting points, I took plaster casts of sections of the riverbed at low tide. These casts then became plaster moulds used to form clay tiles for the floor of the gallery. The clay was dug from the Coonagh brick fields just outside of Limerick city; it is essentially the same material that was used in the construction of the city centre Georgian buildings during the nineteenth century.
In a series of workshops at Ormston House, I invited members of the public to come and make a tile for the work which came together collectively as a ‘riverbed floor’ in the gallery. The aim of this project was to physically connect the audience with the history of their city while making objects from the River Shannon itself. Through this process individuals became connected to each other, the city, the river, and the gallery space, creating a community that spans time and place.