array

An Dún

Interiors & Furniture Catalogue supplied by Array Collective

Array Collective members are Sighle Bhreathnach-Cashell, Sinéad BhreathnachCashell, Jane Butler, Emma Campbell, Alessia Cargnelli, Mitch Conlon, Clodagh Lavelle, Grace McMurray, Stephen Millar, Laura O’Connor and Thomas Wells.

Formed in Belfast, Country (it’s complicated...) Born in Belfast, West Belfast, East Belfast, Trieste, Sligo, Breaffy, Rathfriland, Oirthear Bhéal Feirste, Killeshandra and Manchester.

All photography by Array Collective.

Images feature Julia Maguire, Patrick O’Connor-Beer, Cliodhna Hession, Luca Campbell and Éadaoin Bhreathnach. Stainglass watermelon by Theresa Coyle and bookbinding press by Robert Campbell.

The artists would like to thank the team at IMMA and everyone who has made this exhibition possible.

Jon Beer; Patrick O’Connor- Beer; Éadaoin Bhreathnach; Dean Black; Luca Campbell; Ray Cashell; Michael Edgar; Austin Finnegan; Clíodhna Hession; Phil Hession; Rob Hilken; Andrew Cassidy; Gillian Fitzpatrick; Jason Murphy, IMMA Technicians; Barry Kehoe; Siobhán Kelly, Visitor Engagement Team, IMMA; Mary and Michael Lavelle; Johanna Leech; Ruaidhri Lennon; David McComiskey; Clare McQuillan; Mo Mansfield; Padraig O’Duinnin; Stephen McClenaghan; Orchid Studios; Amanda Rice; Therese Thynne and the OPW. Array Studios is supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

Let us guide you through our four showrooms situated in the Courtyard Galleries at the Irish Museum of Modern Art...

An Dún* is a new multi-narrative environment by Array Collective. Across immersive spaces a complicated and messy understanding of statehood and citizenship is unearthed. Ideological, topographical and political plans are fashioned and accumulated inside a site of destruction and construction.

Resting outside of time, we hear echoes of our past, present and future in ever-changing failed experiments of hope. The ‘good room’ deep within a cave, stages rituals of citizenship. Behind the scenes, plans are cooked up and mistakes are made, amidst the labour of daily life.

As An Dún shifts and repositions, occupying unsteady space between reality and fiction, care and compromise endeavour to make a shared existence livable.

*dún1, m. (gs. dúin, pl. ~ta). 1. Fort; fortress. 2. Place of refuge, haven. ~ long, haven for ships. 3. (Secure) residence, house. ~ Dé, Heaven. Sa ~ seo, in this house (of security). 4. Promontory fort; bluff. (Var:gs. & pl. ~a)

ROOM ONE

Top Design Tip! Why not purchase our red carpet tiles to achieve a luxourious look for an affordable price?

Follow us carefully into the depths of the cave and make yourself (un)comfortable in our ‘Good Room’. Here you will see a showcase of our finest interiors inspired by your past, presnt and fututre. Every detail in this room has been designed with pride and foreboding and everything has a price. A ‘set’ piece to help reassure and orientate yourself with a feeling of security and superiority, allowing you to block out any intruding chaos from outside.

Our bespoke lighting gives the false sense of that calm dull daylight just before the sun sets. The curtains are from our ‘Fire and Floods’ range and reference paintings from the 15th - 21st Centuary along with floating visions of London’s Westminister and Belfast’s City Hall. This pairs beautfully with our fully immersive ‘Retro-Futurism Landscape’ wallpaper. An abstracted dystopian facsimile is littered with Portland stone off-fall from a Stormont Na Gig stone carving. The smeared yellow horizon a reminder of the shipyard cranes once seen in Belfast.

Floods

1: Storm on the Sea of Galilee - Rembrandt 1633

2: Death Star Ruins - Star Wars IX the Rise of Skywalker 2019

3: Snow Storm, Steam-boat off a harbour’s mouthJ.M.W Turner 1942

4: The wreck of a transport shipJ.M.W Turner 1810

Fire

1: The DelugeJ.M.W. Turner 1805

2: Dictionnaire Infernal - Jacques Collin de Plancy 1818

3: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - Albrecht Dürer 1498

4: The Great Day of His Wrath - John Martin 1851-1853 Floods Fire

Four views of Cavehill, the omnipresent basalt cliffs that overlook Belfast. First written about in the annals of the Kingdom in Ireland in 1468, Beann Mhadagáin or Madagán’s peak is in reference to a king of Ulster who died in the 9th century. It’s known to us now as Ben Madigan, Napoleon’s Nose or Gulliver. It has been a meeting place for kings and rebels and the site has great cultural and political significance acting as the stage for repeated aggressive agrarian revolution and the Ulster Land Wars of the 1770’s.

II. from DerryRdCAVE VIEW

IV. from the top behind noseCAVE VIEW

III. from bottom (Castle) upCAVE VIEW

I. Divis Mountain from Cavehill SouthCAVE VIEW

It is 1924, 2024, 2124, 1932. The Saorstát Eiréann - the Irish Free State Official Handbook first page is a reproduction of a painting of Mount Errigal by Paul Henry. It is 2232, 2332, 2442. The wild west is now a desert, orange like Colorado, yellow like sand and gold, shiny like the Cave Hill Diamond, too hot and too cold to stay outside.

It is 3362, it is 1962, and a new play is coming to town, supposedly about state-building and shapeshifting. There is a lot of work going on behind the scenes. It is 1762, it is damp and dark. Where we are standing right now, what we build could be anything.

Game: spot how mnay times you can see the Westlink in our show rooms...

Westlink Lug Chair

The Westlink road physically divides the city of Belfast and isolates communities. This chair is an ode to this disastrous piece of design.

Made with oiled birch ply, the box-like structure creates a private space and provides temporary shelter from draughts. Adorned at the top with pedestrian guard rails. A Georgian wired glass security window offers light while keeping you segregated. The sides are cushioned with an organic cotton twill print of the moss covered concrete pattern that can be seen from Grosvenor Road to York Street. The wedge seat sports our North Street Underpass upholstery. Outside is clad with concrete grey panels inspired by the slip road walls of the Westlink with a Broadway underpass base. The dimensions are based on the dates this dystopian infrastructure was planned and each phase opened.

*Vulnerable to flooding

Belfast Urban Motorway plan

Hostile Architecture Wedge Seat

Choose your Assembly Seat distribution. Designs updated after each Assembly Election result.

Castle Buildings Ministerial Leaning Chairs

Designed by our Strand One experts using STV and d’Honte. Hand painted by voters.

The Castle Buildings vertical chair back possesses neither style nor character. An un-iconic focal point during the multi-party peace talks as we waited for the Good Friday Agreement. Always on the brink of collapse it is capable of withstanding walkouts, leaks, stand-offs, tears, tantrums and breakthroughs. Feel separate but equal as the height of each chair base is calculated by the number of designated Unionist and Nationalist seats after each election. With the option of ordering an ‘Other’ designated footstool or arm rest. Make key decisions for your dyarchy with parallel consent. Our Glider halt bench seats make it easier to leave when disagreements occur.

Production has been suspended on six occasions. The First Minister and deputy First Minister model was replaced by the new Joint First Minister model in 2024. Expect disruptions and delays to delivery.

John Taylor - “ I wouldn’t touch it with a 40 foot barge-poll”

*This model is based on 1st Assembly election after the Good Friday Agreement.

‘Ring of Steel’ turnstyle headrest

Carson’s Crotch cut-out accessorised with jesmonite hostile architecture spikes

1. Zebra Clam Porcelain Pot (from our Invasive Species range).

2. Ruddy Duck Feet Porcelain Pot (from our Invasive Species range).

3. Porcelain Fist.

4. Regenerate the Developer’s Match (box styled after North Street Arcade, includes a burnt match for each suspicious fire that takes place on Donegall Street - currently 6).

5. Update your adversarial interiors and achieve the new ‘Coalition-style’ layout with a Castle Buildings and Assembly Chamber Fire Screen. Inspired by the Northern Ireland Assembly Chamber seats, the front is upholstered in blue marine leather bordered with walnut stained moulding, creating the perfect setting for your plenary meetings. To bring perspective to any political impasse, utilise the security aesthetics of the Castle Buildings side. Featuring three Georgian wired glass panels it is styled after one of the fire doors the multi party talks took place behind, fused with a ‘Ring of Steel’ turnstile base, adorned in black velvet trim.

6. Porcelain chair leg fire poker.

7. Surveillance Peephole into Room Three/Four.

* Complete the Stormont Parliament look with imitation ashes for your fireplace made from finely ground Portland Stone (CASH SALES ONLY).

Nestled between the opulence of the ‘good room’ and the grounded authenticity of the workers’ realm, the “clock in clock out”space encapsulates a bit of both. Chimes of church, protest, ceremony, and pragmatics converge, marking a threshold with the potential for both conflict and conversation, offering fertil ground for the creation of new narratives, identities, tunes, and soundscapes. The misaligned embroidered Irish provinces on both cushions suggest that dreams don’t always match reality, hinting at the uncertainty of state-building ambitions.

Watermelon Spoons

Room 2 FLUSH!

Handmade ‘Workers Jacket’ with ‘Burnt Out’ embroidered badge featuring protective primrose, fire and the ‘Big House.’

Child proofing below the Tenement Lines

Room 3

Take a seat back stage and get to work! Bring the kids, they can play in the fireplace but please don’t let them touch anything above the line. This homely workspace is layered with plans good and bad, where mothers and messers cook up rebellion in the cracks out the back.

Bespoke Historical Stains

Our team of specialists can provide bespoke wall markings and period shelving to add character and authenticity to any space. We have a full range in stock from neolithic geometric pattern scratches, Derry city factory patina and linen laundry smog stains all available.

Round the House and Mind the Dresser!

Our traditional modernist Irish Welsh dressers can sit proudly in any home. With plenty of display shelving to show visitors just who you are, where you’ve come from and what you stand for!

This model features a sanctury lamp so the pressence of the Lord (complete with Catholic Guilt) can be passed down for generations.

The worksurface can be used for cutting bread or meat or in our larger models laying out the deceased (free shoes included).

The space below is roomy enough for nesting hens/ducks/geese, with a modesty curtain - dyed with mother’s milk and organic raspberry tea (used for unwanted pregnancy).

This dresser sits on wheels to allow for flexibility, compromise and change inspired by Patrick Kielty’s (2023) comment on ‘changing some furnitutre to make people feel welcome’ in relation to all island Irish Self-Determination.

Commemorative

plates (with or without stand)

a. 1468

The earliest known separate map of the island of Ireland, Portolan Atlas by Grazioso Benincasa.

b. 2016 Remain Vote (Brexit)

c. 2017

‘Lest We Forget’ Remembering the apology issued by RTÉ for this Late Late Show graphic showing life expectancy in Ireland.

d. 2524

This plate is to commemorate Ireland becoming the largest country in Europe after the Great Submersion, due to it’s expansive water territories.

e.

i.

k. l.

m. n.

o.

r.

In our display dresser you will find a range of handmade clay pieces:

e. Black Pigs Dyke Trotter Clay Pot (from our Boarders range).

f. Worm’s Ditch Clay Pot (from our Boarders range).

g. Canadian Waterweed Clay Pot (from our Invasive Species range).

h. Worm’s Ditch Clay Pot (from our Boarders range).

i. Porcelain Speculum, women’s health once shameful now pride of place on the dresser.

j. Plastercast Pigeon Spikes (from our Hostile Archecture collection)

k. Rockall

l. Cavehill foraged wood anemone

m. Cavehill foraged lesser celandine

n. Cavehill foraged herb robert

o-q. Rolling pin Skyscrapers

r. Handy ova storage for back-up babies

s. Sea and saline sperm sacs

t. Mermaid’s punt purses

u. Decorative boarder made from clay seaweed.

Also seen on display are the Tea Caddy showing the Dáil repurposed in a brutalist landscape (containing the body of christ). Our Biscuit Tin with Stormont Factory Chimneys is a great place to keep paper currency (seen below).

We also stock silk from the Last Silk Weaver in the Liberties, Padraig Breathnach.

LENTICULAR TECHNOLOGY!

Array

Collective Stamp Collection

When building states, construction can intentionally segregate communities rather than unify. The classic native animals and state buildings that traditionally adorn stamps are replaced by blueprints of hostile architecture and invasive species and presented as lenticular 3-D flip images.

Nasc Peiste/Wormlink (The Worms Ditch and the Westlink).

Gob Cruach/Bill of Steel. (The Ring of Steel and the Ruddy Duck).

Balla FiailÍ/Weed Wall (Canadian Waterweed and the Peace Wall).

Teach Séabra/Zebra House (Zebra Clam and Marlborough House, Craigavon).

Blueprints

Cyanotypes show plotting and painstacking planning for our Stamp Collection.

Templates

‘An Immaculate business proposal’

These blind embossed prints, in the modernist style, imagine the design proposals for the suppression of women in the new ‘free’ state of Ireland. After proclaiming Ireland female in 1916, the Ireland of the 1920s preceded to break any promise of dishonouring her with “cowardice, inhumanity or rapine.”

Array’s print series ‘An Immaculate Business Proposal’ depicts templates for manipulating bodies through an architecture of control. Floating spectres bestow the moral authority to monetise shame through removing stains from society’s laundry.

View these plans from one of our pulpit lectern supplied by Belfast City Hospital, allowing you to insert religion into medical matters. Complete with bespoke hierarchical curtain dyed with milk and nettles.

Galvanised steels pipes & fixtures

The British Army argued that future planning in Belfast should provide “the maximum natural separation between the opposing areas through some sort of cordon sanitaire.”

Cordon Sanitaire

The Westlink was a means of creating a 100 yard wide cleared belt between communities and called for planners to create “natural” divisions between difficult areas by building new roads, fueling the social divide further.

B is for Babs, B is for Blackberries

There was an auld woman from Culfadda in Hell, Rightful tightful tiddy fol tay

Sure, the oul devil himself came to her one day And says ‘Me oul’ doll, will you come away?’

Then he peddled her up, right up on his back, And like an oul feather he carried his sack. He carried her on till he came to a stone

And he left her down and rattled her bones.

With me rightful ta tiddy fal tay

Rightful ay addy ay addy ay aye.

Piper’s Cloth

Naturally Dyed Fabrics

Recipes:

Gentrification Dye - Avacado stones (from local trendy cafe).

Slapper Dye - Marigold (in reference to domestic washing up gloves).

Body Autonomy Dye - Raspberry Tea (used for unwanted pregnancy).

Land Clearance Dye - Nettle Tea (Many who died in the Irish “famine” were found with green stains in their mouths, having eaten nettles).

Map making:, we create new coast lines by dipping natural fabric in nettle tea.

Milk patterns: drawing on the fabric with milk before dying with raspberry tea.

Laundries & Linen Mills

Buddleia (neglected city) Primrose (protection from fire) Nettle (see recipes)

Our tablecloths have been handpainted by the next generation of Array artisans Luca, Paddy and Clíodhna.

Home is where the hearth is! This defunct fireplace has been turned into a playden for little ones to explore while their parents do the housework. Pots of eggs, watermelons and offcuts from the Bataí Scoir can all be reconfigured and messed about with!

Our ‘Ring of Steel’ wooden sorting shapes have been hand-painted with child safe paint, and come in a beautifully embroidered bag. Each shape is a segment of Belfast’s fortified city centre that make up the different phases of ‘Operation Segment’ from 1972-1984. This high security perimeter around the shopping district was entered by pedestrians through turnstiles followed by searches. Checkpoints were replaced by CCTV in the 1990s making the city another surveillance and security trend setter.

The play mat shows roads that sever Belfast on top of the city’s Hydrogeology map. See if you can spot Broadway Roundabout, York Street Exchange or the original Belfast Urban Motorway Plans.

Our Playroom Púca hobby horse features Blackberry fabric ears and blackberry jewelled eyes. The Bridle contains 3 strands of the puca’s mane to help riders tame it.

Gan Ciontacht, Gan Náire,

agus Gan Bataí Scóir

Spoons made from a fallen Ash tree in Co. Down.

The Statutes of Kilkenny, Displacement, Oppression, War, Famine, An Bataí Scoir.

The Irish language has had a lot to endure. Among its population (in particular the north) the language can illicit feelings of pride, shame, guilt, belligerence, mistrust, anger. Decline in the number of native and fluent speakers of gaeilge can be traced over centuries right back to invasion. One of the most distressing stories of the languages decline is the use of the bata scoir in the 19th century. The bata scoir (a wooden stick) was placed around the neck of a child and a stroke scored into the wood each time they spoke Gaeilge, each stroke represented the amount of punishment to be given to the child. Systematically the language was beaten out of a generation.

In 2024 Gaeilge has officially* been recognised as an official language in the North of Ireland and there is an increase of speakers and learners throughout Ireland.

*Irish Language Act received Royal Assent in December 2022.

Room 4

Pantry containing the ingredients for all the pieces seen across Rooms One, Two and Three...

Natural dye potions and recipes.

Handmade Book Binding Press by Robert Campbell.

Stain glass watermelon by Theresa Coyle to show solidairty with the people of Palestine.

Sugan Square with Fisherman’s Rope.

We have a wide range of collage teatowels available! You wash, we’ll dry!

Handmade Linen Aprons made to order! can come ‘pre-messed’ on request!

Array AnarchaAnnals

These hand-bound destruction books are filled with thoughts, lines, colours and exchanges between Array members & their kids, using archives, inspiration and play. Even the covers are fashioned from kids drawings, scraps, and cut outs from our initial templates.

Please visit our show rooms in the Courtyard Galleries at the Irish Musuem of Modern Art (IMMA) until September 15th 2024 or visit our website www.arraystudiosbelfast.com