• Tiernan McCrea
Tiernan McCrea

This project is rooted in personal history and inherited memory. I explore the emergence of surfing in Ireland during the Troubles, using it as a lens to examine identity, conflict and generational trauma. My father grew up in County Tyrone at the height of the Troubles and began surfing in the mid-1980s. His relationship with the ocean became mine, and in this work, I interrogate what we carry, what we pass on, and what we leave behind.
At its core, the project reflects on the tension between freedom and violence, escape and inheritance. A key part of the work is a collection of 42 brown paper bags, each marked with symbols and icons drawn from both surf culture and the Troubles—wave patterns, petrol bombs, barbed wire, weather maps. These bags form a visual language that shifts between personal memory and historical reference, abstraction and documentation. Through this symbolic fragmentation, I explore how meaning is layered, distorted, and carried across generations.
The sea, for me, is both freedom and weight. It offers escape but never lets us fully outrun where we’ve come from. This work attempts to hold those contradictions—and in many ways, it’s also a love letter. To surfing. To resilience. And to the people of the North, like my family, who came out the other side.