about her current exhibition

Not Yet Saved

MARY FLANAGAN INTERVIEWS ARTIST JO KILLALEA ABOUT HER PAINTING PRACTICE.

AMONG THE DEFINING qualities of Jo Killalea’s art is its evocation of time and space. Her works draw inspiration from the landscape and the social history of her native Mayo and are overlaid with a global outlook. A bursary award from the Ballinglen Arts Foundation enabled her to spend two weeks in residence at their arts centre in Ballycastle, County Mayo, in February 2020. There, she began work on the paintings that form her exhibition, ‘not yet saved’. It is entirely fitting that these works will be shown at The Ballinglen Gallery, where the paintings are essentially at home.

Mary Flanagan: Your forthcoming exhibition, ‘not yet saved’, addresses the cultural and ecological importance of the bog, and its relevance as a metaphor for a disappearing way of life. How did you arrive at the title for the exhibition? Jo Killalea: The exhibition title ‘not yet saved’ has dual references, relating to the tension between conflicting relationships with the bog. On the one hand, it relates to the ongoing tradition of turf cutting, and on the other hand, the desire for preservation of the bog and all it contains, both visible and hidden. The paintings in this exhibition follow on directly from the ‘Peatlands’ series of paintings, which reflect on the impact of peat extraction on carbon emissions. Those paintings have a specific artistic vision, namely, to highlight the significant effect of local actions on climate change. My recent paintings continue to address that theme, but in a much broader context. I strive for a more sensitive reflection on the socio-cultural and ecological preciousness of the bog as a habitat and a landscape, which contains evidence of our heritage and social history, has shaped our identity, and is core to our survival in the future.

MF: So, this exhibition may be seen as an elaboration on the themes and concerns reflected in your previous paintings? JK: There are obvious visual and conceptual similarities between the current paintings and the previous series I’ve made, especially ‘Peatlands’ (2017-19) and ‘Blighted Lives’ (2012-17). They are all inspired by an intense relationship with the west of Ireland rural landscape and its history. The colour palette is similar throughout, while the motifs of mounds, rows and marks are common across the work. Other artists, including Joseph Beuys, Patrick Ireland and Willie Doherty, who looked to the bog landscape for inspiration, are important influences for me. I share their deep appreciation of the uniqueness and complexity of place and its impact on memory and identity. While my own paintings overtly reflect on the bog, the references are abstracted and filtered through my social, political and environmental concerns using a distinctive imagery.

MF: I am interested in exploring the motifs and patterns that recur in your paintings – can you tell me about their significance? JK: I use motifs such as mounds, rows of parallel lines, rectangles, short strokes, and circles across all of my paintings. These motifs help me to convey certain information and meaning depending on the context. All have their origin in the rural landscape and in farming traditions. The mound above ground is a symbol of preservation and represents three items that Irish farmers were dependent upon for survival, up to the mid-20th century. Harvested potatoes were stored for the winter in the traditional earth mounded potato pits; turf was stored in a reek or rick beside the house as a source of fuel for cooking and heat; hay, as winter fodder for livestock, was piled from rows into a haystack and conserved for the winter. The mound also has roots in funerary traditions around the world. In my painting, kinship, I use it as a kind of cenotaph in memory of people who met their deaths in the bog during the famine, and also to remember the ancient bog bodies.

I started using rows as abstracted representations of lazy beds in my famine paintings. I have continued to use them in my recent work, for example, laid out, because they represent the orderly ways crops are planted and harvested. I use marks, lines and circles to indicate various objects and forms in the landscape or to illustrate numerical facts about an issue. Sometimes the marks are drawn with paint, as in endangered, where they represent the extraction of a valuable resource from the earth. Other times they are made by scratching onto the layer of wet paint, as in the painting céide fields 3. Here, the marks can be viewed as a symbol of widespread turfcutting on the blanket bog.

MF: Can you outline your approach to making a particular painting? JK: Before making any work, I carry out preliminary research. This includes reading, exploring locations, making sketches, taking photographs, and gathering stories. Then I make lots of small works on paper or in sketchbooks before moving on to painting. I start by covering the prepared canvas or board, using a coat of burnt sienna or orange. Then I start painting, using a limited palette of earth colours. I don’t over think or plan too much ahead, which can yield mixed results. Sometimes a painting gets finished very quickly and I can hardly remember making it. But often it needs reworking over a long period of time and can be abandoned for a while before I eventually get inspired and suddenly it’s finished. I work mostly in oils on canvas or board, using Williamsburg paints. I use mixed media and tend to be freer and more experimental when working on paper.

Jo Killalea, endangered, 2020, oil on canvas; image courtesy the artist.

MF: It would seem that much of your own lived experience goes into your work, and that your social and political values are in evidence. JK: I agree that much of my lived experience is reflected in my work. I grew up on a farm, and have a professional background in natural science, social justice, development and education, in both east Africa and in Ireland. My paintings are informed by these experiences and lead me to include social critique in my work. It’s important to me that my paintings reflect contemporary issues, but the painterly aspect is highly important too. I try to go some way towards reconciling political significance and aesthetic beauty.

MF: The American poet, Louise Glück, said that “the dream of art is not to assert what is already known but to illuminate what has been hidden.” Do you agree? JK: The reference to ‘illuminating what is hidden’ is apt because through my paintings, I aim indirectly to expose or reveal something, especially the interconnections between local and global experience. For example, the first paintings I made on the residency in Ballinglen were of the nearby Céide Fields, the oldest known field system of farming in the world which dates back over 6,000 years. When the climate became much wetter, the farms had to be abandoned and people’s livelihoods were destroyed. Over time, the fields were buried under a blanket of peat. This shows the historical impact of climate change on the land and on livelihoods locally. In the same way today, with climate unpredictability increasing globally, many subsistence farming communities worldwide are unable to adapt and survive and are migrating in search of a more sustainable future. This is one of the connections I try to ‘illuminate’ through my paintings in the exhibition, ‘not yet saved’.

Jo Killalea is an artist based in County Mayo. Her exhibition, ‘not yet saved’, will open at Ballinglen Gallery in June 2021. jokillalea.com

Mary Flanagan is a graduate of the MA ACW programme at NCAD. Among her current interests is the life and art of James Coleman.