Phase 2!

Well, after I found out that the Arts Council had declined to fund the Silvermines publication, I went back to the drawing board.

All credit due to the Arts and Heritage Offices of North Tipperary County Council who were willing to work with me on the development of a follow on project, which I have provisionally titles 'Silvermines Story Map'.

This is the proposal for the project:

This artwork will develop through a process of discussion between the artist and the local community, working to create a map of walking routes in the area and a series of signs along those routes presenting texts and images related to all aspects of the area; urban myths as much as heritage, stories that may be factual or fictional but are part of the mythology of the village.

A public meeting took place on October 9th to discuss the project in Hickey's pub.

Report from Public Meeting, Hickey’s Bar
October 9th 2008

Fiona gave a short presentation looking back at the Imaginary Museum and the Story Map that she created inside the front door there.

The stories on this map were drawn from lots of sources – people, books, newspaper articles, material on the Internet etc.

She outlined that her idea is to take some of these stories and create signs with images and text that will go in the locations from which the stories are drawn (number of signs subject to budget). She will then create a map of walking routes along which the signs can be viewed.
Fiona showed work from two art projects in America – one in New York and on in Atlanta – where they created signs in particular places to commemorate hidden histories or overlooked stories.

There were many discussion following this about what routes should be ‘mapped’. While there are a great many walks in Silvermines of historic interest, not all are publicly accessible at the moment.

It was suggested that the project concentrate initially on the village itself and surrounding area, and that it might be possible to build on that in the future, seek more funding and create something similar at Shallee or other mineworks.

People had good suggestions for further funding opportunities that might be sought. Fiona explained that she had spent 10 months seeking Arts Council funding to do a follow-on book project which had not been forthcoming in the end, and so rather than waste any more time she thought it would be better to plough ahead with the funding that is available and perhaps build on that in the future.

Fiona agreed to try and keep everyone informed of developments through a newsletter and to return for a public meeting with her designs for the actual signs and map.

Many thanks to Tommy and Catherine for their hospitality and lovely welcoming fire!

Silvermines: Becoming Utopia

In many ways this unfolding project has been an attempt to discern the ways in which rural space is ordered and controlled and to locate occluded or counter-hegemonic practices and thinking.

The character of non-metropolitan space is quite different to that of urban space –topographically space tends to be more apparently open and horizontal but subject to an invisible architecture of regulation governing land-use; rural audiences or publics are more dispersed but often less transitory so encounters tend to be quite different; temporality is not linear and progressive as I described earlier but tends to include the past in a more real and concrete way; engagement with nature is integral to the social, economic and cultural matrix and then of course there are areas which are neither urban nor rural.

Silvermines is an area of ecological disaster; seven centuries of mining have left the watercourses and the land impregnated with heavy metals. It is also a beautiful place with an incredibly interesting and complex history. Imagining Silvermines; a psychogeography was developed in response to the passion for local history that I encountered all over Tipperary but particularly in Silvermines.

Using the Space Shuttle I entered into an agreed exchange with the people of the village; I provided a space and a display service arranging whatever material people brought to form the ‘collection’ of a temporary museum. In return they afforded me an opportunity to enquire into the narrative constructions and practices that were used by different groupings within that community to make sense of their place, including nostalgia, racing and burning out cars, graffiti, farming practices, a kind of epic poem tradition peculiar to the area, and also an unpicking of the construction of local history.

In response to that first encounter stage and with the intention of extending the notion of psychogeography that informed it I am developing a publication Silvermines: Becoming Utopia for distribution back into the community that befriended me and vice versa. The intention is to reflect the ‘tactics’ employed by different groups of people to make sense of this place.

The publication is also an attempt to place the project in critical relation to itself, to subvert conventions of ‘reading’ and include the participant-reader in the act of meaning making. To that end the publication will include a number of movable elements and sections, a number of board games designed around the realities of the place, a fictional ‘I’ve Been to Silvermines’ tourist merchandising line based on the legacy of mining for a much-desired but presently absent tourist industry, and a selection of material and maps gathered or generated through the project that may be real or fictional.

The completion of the project is currently funding-dependant and will be developed in collaboration with Clive Moloney, Sally-Ann McFadden (artists who worked with me during the first stage of the project) and Dave Wrenne, graphic designer.

Still here!

Things have been very quiet in terms of the public face of this project for a while, but I have been collaborating on the book with Clive Moloney, Sally Ann Mc Fadden and Dave Wrenne (designer) over the last few months.




The book is taking quite an interesting form; it's going to be far more expensive to produce than I can afford so we need to get one or two dummy's together and look for funding.



I went to Silvermines yesterday to take some images for the publication; it was a beautiful misty day but the sun broke through when I arrived. I managed to take some shots of the ochre slag (for the cover) and also went up to Shallee mines to get another shot of the 'canyon'. There has been quite a lot of work done there, and an ad has been placed looking for companies to tender and take over the management of the place - in advance of development maybe, I am not sure.



Magcobar has been closed and fenced off, to keep the travellers out I expect. The usual story, just lock the travellers out rather than deal with their need for space.



I wandered up and down looking for the big area of subsidence; despite having a map from Robin Wallace showing me where to find it I just could not. Unless I actually stood on it, but that looked like a slag heap to me.