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- Ciarán O’Connor
Ciarán
O’Connor
DIALECTICAL LANDSCAPES: AN EXPLORATION INTO THE MODERN RUIN
My work is an exploration into examples of Modern Ruins in Limerick. The term Modern Ruins refers to recently built man-made structures that have fallen victim to the inevitable process of urban decay. Robert Smithson talks about ‘ruins in reverse’; structures caught in a state between being built and falling into disuse and decay. My motive for working with derelict architecture has developed from an aesthetic exploration into an interest of these spaces in a new context; the ambiguity of these structures past and futures and the raw materials that make them up. My work is an inevitable development into a body of raw materials; sculptures informed by the found materials they are constructed from and heavily worked prints on plasterboard. The nature of the materials, the sites they came from and a process of simultaneously printing on numerous boards has created a sense of physicality that has emerged as a very important element and taken control of my work.