Students
Fiona Hayes / Archiving Hope
Archiving Hope explores post-industrial gravel pits in West Cork. Through deep mapping and deep sensing techniques, this investigation archives the vibrations of life in these currently un-curated spaces. In the Anthropocene, these gravel pits act as unintended wildlife sanctuaries amidst the industrial-agricultural landscape. They are part man-made lake and part biological desert, stripped of thousands of years of geological history, and once again, ready for occupation and rebirth. Human absence is often all the stimulus required to start that re-birth.
Throughout the past year, I have traced the movement of gravel from these pits to the homes, schools, and roads that our modern lives require. The polished concrete floors of Uillinn reveal the very heart of these gravel pits in its deep lustres of limestone sandstone and basalt. Archiving Hope employs concrete blocks to capture the fragmented traces from these magical island sanctuaries. Images of insects and birds, delicate flowers, herbs, grasses, shrubs, and tiny little trees, that have grown from the barest of ground. Now gone, this year’s summer beacons are immortalised on these blocks. Constructed from the very same fragments in the polished concrete floors of Uillinn, this installation re-unites event and actor, as past and present become known.
Email: f.hayesconnolly@yahoo.ie
Photo: Emma Jervis
