Glór, Ennis
2 February – 30 March 2024
Christine Mackey’s solo exhibition, ‘Acts of Care (in-process)’, is showing in the gallery space at glór until 30 March. The exhibition weaves a transversal narrative that is rooted in ecological and biological dialogues of immediate local concern; it dismantles the stratified order of things, and attends to the ways in which all things operate ‘ecosophically’.1 The presented works reflect Mackey’s committed practice of care in response to complex environmental issues.
With both aesthetic and ecological sensitivity, Mackey fuses drawing, printmaking, and sculptural forms that are adaptable and responsive to environmental and audience interaction. ‘Acts of Care’ first highlights the contrast between the bountiful nutrient-rich seaweeds along the Irish coastline and the expansive non-native Sitka Spruce afforestation dead zones, now covering what was once nature-rich land. A fast-growing, non-native, American evergreen, Sitka Spruce covers 16% of County Clare and accounts for 9% of the 11% of Ireland’s limited forestry land coverage.2
Sitka needles are acidic and can lower the pH of soil as well as block out light, affecting the growth of other species and impacting the overall biodiversity of the forest floor. Mackey’s three-minute video work, Surface Dressing: Acts of Care (2024), situates the audience within an intertwined ecosystem narrative. Mackey illustrates her active efforts of interspecies stewardship within the non-native forest floor setting. She attentively transplants a trio of native saplings, distributes seaweed at the sapling base, and crafts a barrier from fallen twigs in defence against predators. The video is accompanied by a floor installation, combining a recycled palette box layered with seaweed and sand, a glass specimen jar containing a soil sample, and a photograph of a garden planter.
The installation establishes the biophilic link between human, plant and marine life which is further apparent in Dúlamán (2024), a hybrid, large-scale wall-hanging of interlaced eco-prints on plant-root sized Washi paper. In this delicate patchwork, phenolic compounds present in the seaweed have chemical reactions, producing shadow-like marks on the natural paper. Merged Archival Interventions (2024) repurposes a photography developing tray to display an unframed photograph, flanked by a series of analogue photograms depicting various seaweeds. These photograms are made by arranging the ocean vegetation on a light-sensitive surface and illuminating – a technique that produces ethereal, abstract silhouettes.
Duse; Dillisk (Palmaria palmata) and Kelp; Oarweed, Sea rod (Laminaria digitata) are two archival items from Mackey’s ongoing ‘Alga Marina Visual Archive’. These wall-hung circular works were produced using chromatography, which differentiates and highlights the unique colours of the seaweed. Mackey’s multi-method approach is most successful in these works, which have a detailed and patterned colour spectrum of browns and greys that capture seaweed’s intricate chemistry. The central patterning of these works are reminiscent of the gilled structures beneath mushroom caps, a similarity that underscores the shared eukaryotic complexity of seaweeds and fungi, along with their capacity for asexual reproduction via fragmentation. Home-extraction mobile unit (2024) is a floor-based installation composed of a repurposed iron plate, topped with a metal grid shelf. A glass jar, enveloped in muslin cloth, holds oil extracted from the brown seaweed, Chorda filum – better known as Sea Lace or Dead Man’s Rope.
The exhibition subtly addresses themes of extractivism and ecocide, particularly through the installation Oceanic Debris (ongoing) (2024). Discarded rope forms a structure that is adorned with hanging seaweed. Three circular bioplastic agar forms, positioned on the gallery floor, have contracted – cracking and changing in response to the controlled climate of the human-centric gallery space. The 13 works presented in ‘Acts of Care (In Process)’ individually and collectively speak of industrial exploitation and ecological preservation with melancholic beauty. Mackey’s signature iterative artistic practice offers the viewer a delicate resonance of affective relations in response to the urgencies of ethical interspecies care. The artist will present a lumen printing workshop and a gallery tour on 16 March at glór.
Gianna Tasha Tomasso is an artist, writer, and Assistant Lecturer in Limerick School of Art and Design.
1 The term Ecosophy was coined by French philosopher, Félix Guattari, to denote an ideology of ecological harmony. See: Patricia MacCormack and Colin Gardner (eds.), Ecosophical Aesthetics: Art, Ethics and Ecology with Guattari (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018) p4.
2 Daragh Murphy, ‘Ireland’s Native Woodlands are Quietly Disappearing’, The Irish Times, 19 June 2018.