Untitled series / RHA 2022/ 1997/91 

This series of large format prints were taken with a medium format 6/7 camera in the early 90s in Ireland and England’s changing geographic isolation, political upheaval, queer sexuality, and religious repression. I was using different locations starting with the intimate spaces of my childhood garden, to state museums and public parks. It started with photographing myself in a greenhouse I had built as a teenager in my family’s garden from there to other public places like Dublin at the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland, V&A London and Chelsea College of Art and Design shower rooms.

Using a medium format camera, these works came out of that moment of change, as I moved from Ireland to live and study in London. Titled 1991 images which use religious iconography in multi-image formatting, but my own body is woven into the narrative that mediates between the sensual, the natural and the spiritual. Executed in a protective and defiant manner, the solitary colour image highlights the transient nature of the captured frame as the cut flowers scatter their seeds over my body before the blooms die.

It was a phase of exploration of my sexuality during the time of AIDS and where the body and body fluids were powerful mediums of exploration within my art practice.