FILM ART
A deep journey into the heart of Irish folklore. A story mined from the recollections of school children in 1930's Ireland telling of a haunted thorn tree and what happens to those that cross it.
I was inspired to make this film after reading an entry in the wonderful Roaring Water Journal. I was very much taken with the atmosphere of Finola Finlay’s photographs and also of the included stories from the Dúchas schools folklore collection of the 1930’s. The story is presented here in fragmented form and set to animated versions of Finola’s images and a deep generative score. My focus is trained on the interstices where place meets the woven mythic fabric of its people.
“A dark, brooding landscape in the west of Ireland — beside a river stands a strange tower, venture inside to a decaying world written in renaissance tones and powered by lunar tides”. A remarkable collaboration with award winning artist, British photographer Suzy Moxhay (RA) and Italian composer Davide Bernardi.
A work exploring the origin of the maze and spiral design
The invisible house cannot be seen, but it is not hidden. Through tiny, obscure facets of the mind prism — That same prism that comes in two parts, and that Escher knew, As did the German priest who wrote him of it. From an island in a Lake in the rain, And through midnight lauda-numbed talk of galvanism And of statues that lay asleep, deep in the marble coffin blocks of Canova. Or at Lissadell, again in rain, North western, cold and dark, with the golden flames, pushing, push-pushing
A collaboration with British filmmaker Sapphire Goss and Seattle poet Shin Yu Pai — "I went down a rabbit hole, reading about flies and compound eyes (and how their eyesight works). This took me to other invertebrate creatures, including brittlestars — a kind of seastar...which made me think of childhood songs, about stars and light".
A video poem in five parts, Tidal explores ideas of Buddhist karma and the possibilities for transformation. Using images of ocean tides and the metaphor of waves as unrelenting karmic forces, the lyric sequence moves through the human experience of birth, ignorance, awakening, and rebirth in a narrative in which the film's speaker emerges to reclaim her karmic destiny.
light never caught a glimpse so divine, probing fingers never smoothed the quiet marble touch, lips that never kissed slow cloud motion — the blue marble jack I found as a boy. Video/music 2021, text 1981.
A colaboration between British filmmaker Sapphire Gos. Irish audio visual artist David Ian Bickley and Seattle poet Shin Yu Pai — "I went down a rabbit hole, reading about flies and compound eyes (and how their eyesight works). This took me to other invertebrate creatures, including brittlestars — a kind of seastar...which made me think of childhood songs, about stars and light".
The 3rd movement of David Bickley's MATERIALS represents nature at its most sacred — we have to let go in order to experience the immersive flow at its own pace — the seamless transitions journey downstream, yet imperceptibly we are moving higher, ascending to the dark mountains of knowledge.
This circular structure is an ancient Irish well — In Irish folklore there is the motif of the “salmon of knowledge" residing in a well. One theory proposes that the traditional “well” creature would have been a coiled snake, and since snakes are unknown in Ireland, this symbol was replaced with that of a salmon. I find this interesting when considered in relation to the idea of “spiralled water” — water where the molecules have been aligned into a more easily absorbed form, with many health ben
The path is not a journey it is a conduit, you’re not travelling on it, it is travelling to you
THE HEART OF THE FURNACE FORGED IN SOUL
Poem by Paul Casey Read by Aidan Stanley Drone pilot Elgan Loane
Olympos wind chimes in the holly tree. The same pentatonic scale as the koto.
threshold is a powerful place of communication between the opposing worlds that lie on either side of it
Part of a Phd curation project at The Lewis Glucksman Gallery, University College Cork. This short film examines the concept of the gallery as a "frame," outlining and focusing the internal exhibition through its architectonic structural and decorative detail, much in the manner of a medieval tabernacle frame. The exhibition in question, Everything Must Go, which in itself "frames" aspects of the concept of "value" in art, is never seen, only the patina of curation; the building, the remnants of
THE SYMBOLIC FOREST A THRESHOLD SYMBOL THE MIND
"V" is part one of a seven part film based on the idea of a spiritual line drawn across the Irish landscape. MATERIALS uses various cinematographic techniques to play with time and space, presenting us with an impression of the common Earth elements that are at once alien yet strangely familiar. The score was produced by David in conjunction with ambient and sound art producers Tom Green (The Orb, Another Fine Day) and Dare Mason (Noctorum). This work was produced through a project award fr
DARKWATERS 1 C2 CRAWFORD GALLERY 2005 Future Land – “A Strange Awakening” 8min This piece is about those moments spent under night skies witnessing the dark majesty of nature. Although these spectacles appear solid and complete, they are near impossible to capture on film or video. It is as if we as humans have a special facility within us to “grade” each aspect separately, yet at once, the dark hills, a wind rustled bush and the whirling stars. This piece generates this view using various
THE ELEMENTS ALIEN TO MAN YET STRANGELY FAMILIAR
THE MIND OF MAN INTERFACED WITH NATURE THE DIALOGUE
THOUGHT SEEDS IN A LANDSCAPE WITH JOHN HITCHENS
A CAVE IN PERU SYMBOLS OF THE PAST WITH FABIO ESTABAN NAT GEO
IRISH FAERIE LORE 1 HR RTE TELEVISION 2001
LAPLAND | SAHARA | IRELAND 3 X 40 MIN CASTLE HENDRING