Resort 2017

All kinds of futures

The relationship between artist and place deepens in meaning at this unique corner of north county Dublin, much has happened since the beginnings of the Resort Residency idea in 2014. Our collaborators Lynders Mobile Home and Fingal Arts Office were awarded the prestigious Allianz Business to Arts Award in the Best Small Buisness partnership category, Alan James Burns was the successful recipient of the Arts Council Touring Award for the project he created for Resort Revelations 2016 – Entirely hollow aside from the dark which was presented as part of a national tour.

The stories of extended collaborations locally through creativity reveal themselves every year as the excitement and interest in the artists presence and exploration of this area grows.

While at this location, artists have always been conscious to acknowledge its site specific author Samuel Beckett; the essay Fingal, from More Pricks than Kicks,1934, gives a layer to this landscape which has become an important guidebook to begin a journey here, as is Gerry Lynder’s knowledge of the caves, stories of the RMS Tayleur wreckage, the ever present Lambay island, the intensity of the starry skies uncluttered by the the usual orange city lights. It is little wonder that artists, while on residency are compelled to look above, beneath and beyond to imagine the present, past and what John Steinbeck recounted as ‘all kinds of futures’ in his book ‘Travels with Charley’ in which he described an ethnographic account of a 1967 America.

Steinbeck was referring to a navy soldier who’s sub station offered this potential, Vanessa Daws’ project Other Space – Underwater Explorations of the RMS Tayleur is imbibed with this spirit of un-documented discovery, aided by the expertise of marine archaeologist, Eoghan Kieran and inspired by the stories of local man and former diver Laddie de Jong, Vanessa sought to bring what is hidden to the surface, where the lines are blurred between what Andre Breton described when describing the wonders of the deep in Mad Love also 1937 as ‘the wild eye’ and the facts as uncovered through underwater geo photography, with Other Space lying somewhere in between. Steinbeck also observes the new phenomena of mobile home as a space that simultaneously offers autonomy but also an uneasy permanence, but ultimately questions perhaps that need we all have to claim space. The ‘unease’ was captured in Deirdre O’Mahony’s exploration of food production and its future in the north county when space is in short supply and like the travelling ethnographer, Catherine Barragry visualised through music, sound and text this feeling of landing in unfamiliar territory and the attempt to find your place within it.