VISIONS OF AN UNSETTLED EARTH An Exhibition by Debbie Godsell, Fiona Kelly and Sarah O’Flaherty Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, Co. Cork // August 6 – October 31, 2020
Visions of an Unsettled Earth is an exhibition of works by artists Debbie Godsell, Fiona Kelly, and Sarah O’Flaherty, launched at Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, Co. Cork on Thursday August 6 - Saturday October 31, 2020.
The exhibition explores ideas of temporality, transience, and transformation within the current environment. Visions of an Unsettled Earth brings together new and recent works by Cork based artists Debbie Godsell, Fiona Kelly and Sarah O’Flaherty and positions human interactions as a continuous collaboration and negotiation with the land. We live on a restless Earth and to think in terms of deep time, specifically in terms of how we use the land, can be a method of reimagining our problematic present and future. An awareness of the land brings us to consider our historical inheritance, our mythologies, and the legacy we leave behind.
The works in Visions of an Unsettled Earth are those of three Cork based artists - mothers, third-level educators, and freelance arts workers reliant on the gig economy. Common interests and mutual respect for each other’s art practice initially brought them together. The land, myth, and materiality, along with the global health crisis, have reframed this new iteration of their first collaboration Visions of Half-light in 2018 at the Town Hall Gallery in Macroom, with the support of the Cork County Arts Office.
Visions of an Unsettled Earth is a timely new exhibition examining how we as humans can support the Earth beneath us, while at the same time supporting each other in unstable times. In the wake of what is lost, the three artists, materially and aesthetically, rebuild and assemble the detritus of now to narrate a concrete hope for the future. Godsell, Kelly and O’Flaherty depict the land as a malleable entity which can be propped and supported through stacking, draping, and underpinning. Materials are low tech and repurposed where possible and reflect an awareness of both material and consumer wastage. Print, sculpture, and photography are employed by the three artists to describe landscape as a three-dimensional shared reality.