Some of that Sunday art review-reading feeling has stuck with me, that coherency which somehow creates an aura around the art of being brought fully formed into the world. Maybe I should at least pretend to know (everything) about the art I am making before it arrives, but that knowledge comes at me sideways. From a chat, a blog, a list, the light. This particular work however, is already and always here. Elemental, seasonal, cyclical and simple to the point to breathtaking. Well, when the light shifts a particular way, it does mine. The work has taken her time to come into being, even though it is present every time I/we open our eyes. To know this place and the other-worldly architecture, this shelter in a field (with horses) this former gunner training ground, this filmhouse, this echo chamber. To know when the light comes from the line of trees beyond, over the roofs of the houses nearby, and setting towards the curve of Benevenagh. It is happening with help and support from pals, equally enthused and thoroughly experienced with photography as an altered state and embodied way of navigating the world. In this month of September 2021, when screens are showing events that are still hard to make sense of, whether of archival footage from twenty years ago or live streaming of turmoil and upheaval happening too fast to comprehend, visitors are restricted but welcome, to a Limavady field on the north coast, this Saturday 18/9/21. The Camera Obscura @theDome will take place for one day only, and without overwhelming the metaphorical, the experience will be both of the world as it seems, and as it actually is - shifting, upside down and back to front.
Camera Obscura @theDome supported by Binevenagh Coastal & Lowlands Landscape Partnership. Collaboration with and thanks to Martha McCulloch, Harry Kerr, Gail Mahon, Grace McAlister and Caolan McDermott.
Genesis Lost exhibition, Artlink (2019) © Mhairi Sutherland Photography by Martha McCulloch