Reframing 100 by Nerve Centre

Reframing 100

Image: © Enda Bowe 2018 from the series ‘Love’s Fire Song’

Reframing 100 @Reframing_100 #Reframing100

Reframing 100 is an artist billboard programme marking the Centenary of Partition in Ireland. 100 years on from the formation of two new states, the border in Ireland continues to provoke intense speculation and debate. Reframing 100 presents 11 photographic installations by nine contemporary artists whose work responds to issues raised by the border. Organised by the Nerve Centre in Derry~Londonderry in partnership with Gallery of Photography Ireland, the public billboards share artist works with border communities in: Armagh City:

Enda Bowe – Love’s Fire Song

Carrick-on-Shannon:

Nigel Swann – Borderlands

Cavan Town and Omagh: Brian Newman – Border People Derry~Londonderry:

Anthony Haughey – Field Notes from the Border

Dundalk:

Ciaran Dunbar – Diesel

Enniskillen:

Kate Nolan: – LACUNA

Monaghan town:

Kevin Fox – Drum: Portrait of a Village

Newry:

Sean Hillen – Newry Gagarin Crosses the Border (2021 edition)

Sligo town:

Dragana Jurišić – Fields of Gunnera

The installations are on display from 3 May 2021 until 31 May 2021. Reframing 100 Instagram #Reframing100 invites people to share their own photographs reflecting on how the last 100 years have shaped their identities and landscapes. Search and follow #Reframing100 adding the hashtag to your own photos and tagging the project page @Reframing_100 to have your say and share your story.

Background: The nine artists included in the Reframing 100 billboard installations have been featured in the wider Reframing the Border project - a 5-year programme exploring the diverse geographical, psychological and imagined spaces of the borderlands in Ireland. Developed in partnership with artists, curators, arts organisations, communities and funders, Reframing the Border offers creative insights into the issues affecting border communities. It presents work made in the borderlands to border communities through a programme of exhibitions, events and public art installations.

Enda Bowe Love’s Fire Song Over the past 5 years Bowe has worked with young people in Northern Ireland. Taking the symbolic bonfires of July and August as his starting point, Bowe worked collaboratively with people across the sectarian divide to create open-ended visual narratives. Love’s Fire Song is concerned with storytelling and the search for light and beauty in the ordinary. Precise references to political context and geographical locations are underplayed, offering new perspectives that reveal a quiet, contemplative portrait of youth culture. Often defined in opposition to each other by their religious beliefs, cultural background and inherited sense of place, the work highlights instead young peoples’ shared sense of ritual in gathering around a bonfire - which in itself echoes ancient traditions. A life, no matter how ‘ordinary’, is as beautiful and dramatic as anyone else’s. All the joy, stillness, subtleties of emotion and sadness in the everyday which link us all – this is what l am honing in on. People like to be acknowledged, they want to have an identity and presence in a world where they may feel they are not seen nor heard. The emotional narrative of everyone’s life is interesting, and that is what l am drawn to. Enda Bowe

Bowe’s deeply empathetic portraits go beyond stereotypical representations to touch on shared human experiences of longing, vulnerability, joy and celebration. Where others might see mundane, everyday situations, Bowe finds beauty, hope and optimism. Love’s Fire Song looks beyond the often destructive influence of history to reflect on the commonalities that exist between seemingly disparate places and lives. Biography: Enda Bowe’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide including: the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Red Hook Gallery, New York; Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; the National Portrait Gallery, London; Fotohof, Salzburg, Fotomuseum, Winterthur; Gallery of Photography Ireland and The Visual Centre Of Contemporary Art, Ireland. Enda Bowe won the National Gallery of Ireland Zurich Portrait Prize in 2019. He has twice received the Taylor Wessing Portrait Second Prize in 2019 & 2018 at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Curated by Gallery of Photography Ireland, his recent Love’s Fire Song exhibition was included in Frieze magazine’s top 10 UK and Ireland exhibitions for 2020.

www.endabowe.com

Image: © Enda Bowe - ‘Untitled’ from the series ‘Love’s Fire Song’

Ciaran Dunbar Diesel Diesel traces the illegal dumping of toxic waste material, commonly referred to as ‘sludge’, by diesel launderers at sites along the Irish border between Counties Louth, Armagh and Down. Agricultural diesel, intended for off-road agricultural use, costs about 50c less per litre than regular car diesel. Agricultural diesel is dyed (green in the South and red in the North) so as to distinguish it from auto diesel. Early dye removal processes involved pouring diesel from an oil drum into an upside down traffic cone filled with nappies which would adsorb the dye. Other methods involved cat litter and, more recently, acids.

Diesel laundering plants range in size and sophistication, laundering anywhere between 6 and 30 million litres of fuel per year. Between 2008 and 2015, Louth County Council spent €5 million cleaning up 596 dump sites. Apart from the environmental impacts, it was estimated that in 2015 diesel laundering cost the Exchequer approximately €239 million, with the total loss to the national economy in the region of €435 million.

Biography: Ciaran Dunbar undertook a BA in Photography at the Ulster University, Belfast. Ciaran’s parents originated from Northern Ireland but left in the 1980s to escape the Troubles. Ciaran’s work explores issues of

In the 1980s and 1990s this border region lost many of its traditional manufacturing industries such as shoe-making (Clarkes), tobacco (PJ Carrolls) and brewing (Harp, McArdle and Moore), and saw the end of the railway freight trade. The economic downturn, combined with the impact of the ‘Troubles’, has helped this illegal industry to thrive. The issue of diesel laundering is one that nobody wants to talk about – it is seen as a necessary evil. Diesel laundering provides cheap fuel and creates employment and opportunities in the area. Plant closures, illegal dump-sites and contaminated waterways are reported, but then immediately forgotten.

identity, displacement, and his relationship with his immediate locality. Ciaran currently lives and works in Dundalk, County Louth. www.ciarandunbar.com

Image: © Ciaran Dunbar - ‘Untitled’ from the series ‘Diesel’

Kevin Fox Drum - Portrait of a Village Over a period of 18 months Kevin Fox worked with the people of Drum to create a unique contemporary portrait of this County Monaghan border village. A sustained process of engagement with the local community informed the development of this work. Working over this extended period with the people of Drum enabled Fox to reveal a nuanced portrayal of the village and its people. The work actively transcends stereotypical representations, going beneath the surface to reveal a more authentic representation. The portraits of the people of Drum portray the strong sense of pride and resilience felt by people living in the area as they strive to meet the challenges faced by rural communities throughout the borderlands. Evocative landscape photographs capture the enveloping, beguiling beauty of Drum and its’ surrounding countryside. The project is continuing with the artist currently engaged in recording a series of filmed interviews with the residents of Drum. Collectively, the photography and film elements give voice to a strong sense of history and community pride, creating a unique contemporary portrait of the village — past and present.

Biography: Kevin Fox is a photographer and lecturer at Griffith College, Dublin. He has an MA in Digital Arts from University of the Arts London, and a BA in Photography from D.I.T. Kevin has worked in photography since 2006 when he established We Shoot Ltd, a creative production house specialising in e-commerce and commercial photography as well as video production. His art practice engages with communities in Derry and he is currently researching a project exploring institutional care in Ireland. www.kevinfox.ie

Image: © Kevin Fox - ‘Untitled’ from the series ‘Drum - Portrait of a Village’

Image: © Kevin Fox - ‘Megan’ from the series ‘Drum - Portrait of a Village’

Image: © Kevin Fox - ‘Ellie’ from the series ‘Drum - Portrait of a Village’

Image: © Kevin Fox - ‘Untitled’ from the series ‘Drum - Portrait of a Village’

Anthony Haughey Field Notes from the Border

Field Notes from the Border was made in response to the perceived imminent threat to peace and stability on the island of Ireland, a fear generated in the shadow of Brexit. Working in early 2019, Haughey traced border crossings from Carlingford to Donegal. Although most of the border infrastructure was dismantled following the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, traces of a troubled past still remain: helicopter landing pads on mountainsides, former Customs Posts and a long-forgotten steel railway bridge, destroyed by British army explosives in the 1970s.

Anthony Haughey is an artist and academic living in Ireland. His artworks have been widely exhibited and published internationally. His earlier work Disputed Territory explored the disintegration of Bosnia and Kosovo culminating in UNresolved a video installation produced for the twentieth anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. Recent exhibitions include, An Act of Hospitality can only be Poetic, Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda (2018), Reframing the Border, RCC, Donegal and Gallery of Photography, Dublin (2018), UNresolved, a video installation in association with Athens Biennale (2017). The Politics of Images, Belo Horizonte, Brazil (2017), The

Field Notes from the Border considers how function, meaning, and effect are often in a state of flux. Haughey combines photographs, texts and a new video works Blindspot to reflect on Ireland’s ‘seamless’ border.

Museum of August Destiny, Lismore Castle Arts (2016-17) and Manifesto, a single channel video (2016), which toured internationally including New York, Paris and Dublin. This video was acquired for the permanent collection of The Arts Council of Ireland in 2017. His artworks and critical writing has been published widely

Blindspot is a video installation produced with drone technology from a privileged aerial vantage point – evoking memories of border surveillance during the Troubles. In this Foucauldian world the permanent visibility of those subjected to the gaze of the Panopticon generates awareness of the power differential between individuals and the state.

in art journals, exhibition catalogues and monographs and his artworks are represented in many national and international public and private collections. He is an editorial advisor for the Routledge journal, Photographies and a board member of Fire Station Artist Studios. He was awarded an Infrastructure public art commission by Fingal County Council and was recently awarded the National Museum of Ireland’s Artist Centenary Commission. www.anthonyhaughey.com

Image: © Anthony Haughey ‘ Bombed Bridge, near Strabane, 2019“ from the series Field Notes from the Border

Image: © Anthony Haughey ‘ Taylor’s Folly, 2019 “ from the series ‘Field Notes from the Border’

Image: © Anthony Haughey ‘ Diesel Laundering, ‘Dromintee’ from the series ‘Field Notes from the Border’

Image: © Anthony Haughey ‘Bridge Posts, 2019’ from the series Field Notes from the Border

Image: © Anthony Haughey ‘Birdbox, 2019’ from the series ‘Field Notes from the Border’

Sean Hillen LondonNewry & Irelantis Sean Hillen’s work continues the photomontage tradition of political artists, including the influential 1930’s artist John Heartfield. This influence can be seen especially in Hillen’s more explicitly political montages of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. His photo-collage work concerned itself with the contradictions, the black comedies, and the myths related to the Northern Conflict.

Biography: Seán Hillen is an Irish artist. He

I had discovered the writings of Robert Anton Wilson and his notion of ‘Reality Tunnels’ – the idea that we are all, by human nature, severely limited in our comprehension and apprehension of the world by the web of language and ideas we have acquired and accreted and which forms our ‘reality tunnel’ – and that our job, to become more human, may be to look outside of the cave and beyond the flickering shadows.

His ‘Irelantis’ project features fantastical

His later ‘Irelantis’ scalpel-and-glue collages present a bizarre hybrid of everyday postcard visuals, elevated into a dreamlike and fantastical ‘other world’. Many of these highly decorative collages, showing landmarks from around Ireland, are no bigger than a postcard, as most were based on the famous picture postcards of John Hinde. Hillen adapts these nostalgic images, juxtaposing the familiar touristic shots to create an altogether different and complex image.

studied at Belfast College of Art, London College of Printing and the Slade School of Fine Art. His early photographic work, documenting the era of the conflict in Northern Ireland can be seen in his book ‘Melancholy Witness’ and are now held in a separate Permanent Collection at the National Library of Ireland. These photographs became the basis for Hillen’s acclaimed photo montage/collage work.

and comical collages based on postcards of landmarks around Ireland. His works are held in collections including: Newry & Mourne Museum; Allied Irish Bank; Irish Central Bank; Irish State Collection; European Central Bank; Citigroup SA; Microsoft Ltd., Wolverhampton Museum and the Imperial War Museum. www.seanhillen.com

Image: © Seán Hillen - ‘ Newry Gagarin’

Image: © Seán Hillen - ‘ The Great Pyramids of Carlingford Lough, 1994’ from the series ‘Irelantis’

Image: © Seán Hillen - ‘Frontier Times #4’, 1983 “from the series ‘LondoNewry’

Image: © Seán Hillen - ‘Sr Faustina appears in LonoMewry, 1983’ from the series ‘LondoNewry’

Dragana Jurišić Fields of Gunnera “The Balkans are often described as ambiguous, transitory, a place in perpetual flux. Words like a bridge, a crossroad, or a border between the West and the East, or between civilization and barbarism, are often used.

Biography: Dragana Jurišić an ex-Yugoslav artist based in Dublin, Ireland. She works predominantly through the medium of photography, text, film and installation. Since receiving a distinction for her MFA in 2008, Dragana Jurišić has won a significant number of awards including Dorothea Lange and Paul

Humans and gods meet and pass each other on a bridge and on a cross-roads. (Tsvetana Georgieva).

Taylor Award’s Special Recognition from Duke University, numerous Bursaries and Project Awards. In December 2013, Dragana completed her PhD and finalized a three-year long project

Who would want to live on a bridge, or a crossroad, or on a border? These are inhospitable places.

‘YU: The Lost Country’ that culminated in a

I grew up metres away from the border of Bosnia and Croatia in town of Slavonski Brod. Due to its geographic position my hometown was on the frontline during the 1990s civil war. Over a period of three years seventy percent of the city was damaged or destroyed, many civilians were killed and wounded. The town demographics changed significantly due to refugee resettlement.

Through her work Jurišić interrogates issues of

critically acclaimed touring exhibition and a book.

gender, stereotyping, identity, and the effects of exile and displacement on memory. Working primarily with image, text and video installation, with plans to expand into sculpture, she has shown her work extensively in Ireland and abroad. Her work is included in many collections including National Gallery of Ireland, Irish State Art Collection and Trinity College Collection. She has recently completed a commission

Borders create unstable landscapes which are uneasy places for me. Yet I chose to live in a country with its own problematic border. My Fields of Gunnera work deals with my thoughts on being an immigrant woman in Ireland.” Dragana Jurišić

14 Henrietta Street with poet Paula Meehan. www.draganajurisic.com

Kate Nolan LACUNA LACUNA (2015-2021) is an audio/visual work that considers the physical and psychological impact of partition on children of the Irish borderlands. Borders are confused spaces: artificial divisions, lines drawn on maps for political or colonial expediency, with little consideration of the natural or cultural realities and distinctions. From Donegal to Armagh, I have experienced many versions of this liminal space collaborating with young people forgotten in the politics of boundaries. LACUNA began in 2015 in the small village of Pettigo. The River Termon, flowing through the centre of the village, marks the physical border finding Pettigo both in Donegal and Fermanagh, Ireland and the UK, and now, inside and outside the European Union. Three bridges span the river and at places where it narrows, often, without realising, you can step across into another country. In collaboration with young people, we explore the notion of the border as a place in flux. Nolan has been awarded an Arts Council of Ireland commission to collaborate with composer Irene Buckley on a new artwork which weaves together still and moving images, recorded stories and an original soundscape to invoke the tangible and intangible, natural and constructed essence of the Irish borderlands. It will be presented in November 2021 as part of Gallery of Photography Ireland’s landmark In Our Own Image - Photography and Ireland 1939 to the present exhibition.

Biography: Kate Nolan is an Irish visual artist based in Dublin, Ireland, focused on extended photographic stories that examine the nature of identity. Drawn to ‘in-between’ places, she is intrigued by the effects of shifting histories of areas in flux. Working in areas where territory is contested, from the Irish borderlands to Kaliningrad, Russia, Nolan collaborates with local communities to consider these changes. These considerations combine still and moving images with stories from individuals to highlight the contradictions between representation and identity. LACUNA was first presented as a solo exhibition in Gallery of Photography in 2017 and subsequently in Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny and An Gailearaí , Gweedore, Donegal in 2018, Market Place Art Centre, Armagh and Nerve Centre, Derry~Londonderry in 2019. The work has been reviewed in numerous newspapers and magazine including The Irish Times and The Sunday Times She was awarded the Irish Arts Council Visual Arts Bursary 2017 and 2019, and residencies in the Headlands Art Centre, California, the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris and The Digital Hub, Dublin. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally and is held in public and private collections in Japan, USA, France, Portugal, Mexico, UK and Ireland. www.katenolan.com

The thing is, Kate, I love Chinese. I think you’re going off topic, Milly. No. You see, the thing is, the best Chinese is in the North. If they have to stop at the border, it’ll take ages. Plus it’ll probably be freezing cold. Good point.

Brian Newman Border People The political alignment in the north of the island of Ireland is fractured between a consideration of both Irish and British identities. Brian Newman’s work reflects on an institution within one of these divides, the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland.

Biography: Born Belfast, Northern Ireland, Raymond Brian Newman studied at University of Ulster, graduating with a BA (Hons.) Visual Communication 1997. He was awarded an MFA Distinction in Photography in 2016. His work is based on long-term projects and has been widely exhibited in Ireland. He has received

The Orange Order is a Protestant fraternity founded in 1795. They have at their foundation a pledge to uphold and propagate the Protestant Christian faith and sustain British identity within a broader, increasingly secular and diverse European island.

Visual Arts bursaries from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. The development of his work has been supported by Gallery of Photography Ireland, the Department of Foreign Affairs Reconciliation Funds and the Department of Tourism, Culture, Art, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media Co-operation with Northern Ireland Scheme. Newman is continuing to develop

Border People considers the remoteness of intertwined border landscapes where diminishing numbers of Orange Order members secure the fraternities’ isolated meeting places. Photographs and film works featuring interviews with members of rural lodges include LOL 37 made in Altnaveigh Orange Lodge. Border People exists amidst the complexities of Irish histories and the fragility of political circumstances. Collectively the work presents an alternative portrait of the Orange Order which goes beyond stereotypical representations.

the work which will be realised as an artist’s monograph/publication supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Gallery of Photography Ireland in 2021. av

end credits etc

Nigel Swann Borderlands After independence in 1922 and in particular, during the ‘Troubles’ the border was visible and instrumental in defining identities. Since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 travelling along and across this border there have been no physical expressions, no watchtowers, fences or walls, it is unseeable, it is a virtual psychological construct. However, in the run-up to and after Brexit it has become discernible again and starts to evoke renewed questions about identity.

Meeting House in the border county of Monaghan establishes a tension. Built in 1840 on the site of an earlier 17th-century Meeting House it was from here in 1764 the Rev. Thomas Clark led 300 of his congregation on the “Cahans Exodus” to pre-revolutionary America in the search of religious and civil freedom. The issue of Freud’s theory on ‘the narcissism of small differences’ resonates throughout the project throwing light on the binary cultures of forgetting and remembrance so prevalent in Irish culture. Swann is continuing

An overgrown Iron Age linear earthwork acts as a conceptual starting point for the inquiry. This intriguing location, known locally as ‘The Black Pig’s Dyke’, is a 2000-year-old boundary that runs parallel to the present-day Irish / UK border, after Brexit, it now shadows another border that of the European Union and the UK. Two questions emerge; “Can the postindependence border be interpreted, to some degree, as a cross-Channel extension of the Scottish/English border thus emphasising a cultural divide?” and “Can a deep sense of history and place help inoculate against what Freud called the narcissism of small differences ?”

to work on this project. Biography: Nigel Swann was born in Portadown, Northern Ireland in 1962. After graduating from the National College of Art and Design with a degree in Fine Art Sculpture he worked in photography based industries in London. Returning to Ireland in 1997 he set up a production company Swann Production. His artistic practice covers countries such as Japan, Sri Lanka, France and the Central European countries with a recent focus on Hungary. His exhibition, The Yellow Star Houses of Budapest was exhibited at the Architectural Association Galleries, London in 2015 , the Irish Architectural Archives, Dublin in 2017 and at the Tate Britain sponsored Urban Photo Festival in

The Dissenting tradition, Swann’s cultural identity, comes under scrutiny. The ancient dark physicality of the Black Pigs Dyke alongside the architectural clarity of the disused Cahans Presbyterian

2017. Work from ‘Borderlands’ was exhibited at the 2017 Getxophoto festival as part of a group exhibition In Flux, at Parobrod Cultural Centre, Belgrade in March 2018. www.nigelswann.com

About Reframing the Border Reframing the Border programme explores the diverse geographical, psychological and imagined spaces of the borderlands in Ireland. Begun in 2017, a wide ranging programme of exhibitions, commissions, talks, workshops and installations have featured work by fourteen leading Irish-based artists. Reframing the Border brings together contemporary, creative responses to the border in Ireland. It has supported a series of exhibitions including: The Lost Moment - Civil Rights, Protest and Northern Ireland 1968-69; Kate Nolan - Lacuna, Krass Clement - The Light Gleams an Instant; Kevin Fox - Drum: Portrait of a Village; Enda Bowe - Love’s Fire Song and the Field Notes from the Border and Reframing the Border group shows. It is organised by Gallery of Photography Ireland in partnership with the Nerve Centre Derry~Londonderry, Regional Cultural Centre Letterkenny, Monaghan County Heritage & Arts Office. Reframing the Border is supported by: Department of Foreign Affairs - Reconciliation Fund; Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media -Co-operation with Northern Ireland Scheme; Monaghan County Heritage and Arts Offices; The Heritage Council; Monaghan County Creative Ireland programme; Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny; Remote Photo Festival and Donegal County Museum. Gallery of Photography Ireland is supported by The Arts Council and Dublin City Council.

Reframing 100 @Reframing_100 #Reframing100

Project delivered by

Funded by