Recent Exhibitions

I exhibited In the Dead Zoo, a political bestiary, a unique handmade book, in the Dublin Art Book Fair recently and also in the Wexford Book Exhibition, 2013.

In the Dead Zoo cover

In the Dead Zoo cover

The “dead zoo” is a Dublin name for the Natural History Museum which happens to be part of the same building as the Dail, so that I imagine the words of politicians passing onto the animals of the museum. Bestiaries are medieval books that use animals as figures of virtue and vice.

Bestiary3-web

The text is based on texts from the Autumn of 2008– political catchphrases (“We have turned the corner”, “The plan is working”). “We will not be bullied” was a ministerial statement on the day the Troika first arrived in Ireland. I also include the last paragraph of the 2009 budget speech.

Bestiary5-web

In the calligraphy, I use a feature of some medieval manuscripts, an interlinear translation in red added to Latin texts to make the meaning available to ordinary people.

Bestiary6-web

The words in the For Sale page are some of the key words of the 1916 Proclamation.

Bestiary7-web