Surfacing was a body of work reflecting on the eutrophication in Lake Inchiquin, near the artist’s home in County Clare. Algae covered the surface of the lake in the summertime in part due to agricultural practices but also the rapid increase in one-off housing in the area. Applied directly to squares of canvas assembled in a minimalist grid, the utopian aspirations of modernism could thus be reconsidered in this living material through the grid structure.
Exhibited at X-PO a large photographic image of Lake Inchiquin dominated the space. Photographed in winter, the grey flat surface of the water mirrors the sky, half-hidden on its wooded shore is a 1930s Bauhaus-style house. The dwelling stands as a faded symbol of the utopian ideas of modernism in a cold and complex landscape. Writing about Surfacing Michaele Cutaya seggusted that this image ‘presents us with, seamlessly joined, a traditional landscape and an icon of modernity thus suggesting that tradition and modernity can always find new ways of being together but also that no unifying narrative can ever embrace the variety of the possible.’[i]
[i] Michaele Cutaya. Searching for a place in Common. Text Commissioned for the X-PO Project
