Marie Farrington
VAI Member
‘Glossaries for Forwardness’ is a multi-platform project examining convergences between landscape and memory through the architecture of the Museum Building in Trinity College Dublin (26 April – 23 September). This project arose from my artist residency at Trinity Centre for the Environment (2021-22) where my research approached geological sampling methods as ways to explore our interpretation of landscape, and how land can participate in its own representation and display.
Built in 1853 by Cork architects Deane, Son & Woodward, the Museum Building is a seminal work of Ruskinian Gothic architecture. The building itself can be thought of as a geological collection; it is constructed from a vast catalogue of stone types, indexing examples of Caen Stone, Armagh Limestone, Cork Red Limestone, Kilkenny Black Limestone, and Connemara Marble.
My practice employs casting to construct sculptural archives that capture residual aspects of sites, mapping how materials are coded and transformed over time. The works in ‘Glossaries for Forwardness’ were developed by repurposing and inverting analysis procedures used by the Department of Geology, translating processes such as thin-sectioning, microscopic imaging, and resin-mounting into modes of making in the studio. This was informed by research into philosopher Isabelle Stengers, who proposes the scientific method as a practice to negotiate new ways for human and non-human relations to cohabit. The reality-generating potential of scientific field study emerges as a way to enable landscape to direct images and imaginations of itself. This became an important methodology for me to question how the interpretation, appropriation, and conservation of landscape can be reckoned with collectively in light of climate change.
‘Glossaries for Forwardness’ is curated by Rachel Botha, whose curatorial approach to the exhibition and its visual identity referenced the building’s materiality and design, the geology and geography departments housed within the building, and its existing displays. Site-responsive sculptural and textile interventions, installed throughout the foyer of the Museum Building, perform a reflexive sampling of the building’s interior, through an extensive material glossary which includes volcanic olivine dust, bio-resin, anthracite, acid-etched glass, muslin, drafting film, and cast ink. In collaboration with Stanisław Welbel, a six-channel spatial audio installation emanates from the building’s ventilation system, composed on a synthesiser by assigning sounds to the various stone types to build a layered soundscape.
Exploring geology’s links to memory and visibility, ‘Glossaries for Forwardness’ offers an invitation to reimagine human relations to land. Just as the geological research that underpins this project is co-determined by the natural processes it attempts to represent, the presented works make space for the active agency of landscape to emerge. As deep-time materials intersect with momentary human gestures, ‘Glossaries for Forwardness’ activates the Museum Building to engage in a co-creative process whereby the geological actions that formed its architecture – layering, folding, stacking, accumulation, and erasure – become concentrated in the act of making. The exhibition is a call for forwardness, a linear push across one state of being and into another – solid to liquid, inner to outer – encouraging a critical engagement with the representative frameworks through which the climate crisis is mediated.
‘Glossaries for Forwardness’ is supported by the Arts Council, Trinity College Dublin, Trinity Centre for the Environment, Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Dublin City Council, and Fire Station Artists’ Studios. The exhibition is accompanied by a programme of talks, screenings, listening sessions, and a publication, with texts by geologist Dr Quentin Crowley, writer Anneka French, and me. A collaboration with the Department of Ultimology in September will include a talk exploring a range of visual and written resources, where stones signify endings, followed by a participatory workshop with artist Anaïs Chabeur.
Marie Farrington is an artist based in Dublin. She is artist-in-residence at Dublin City Council’s Residential Studios, Albert Cottages, and is currently presenting work in ‘Hammerheads’ at Solstice Arts Centre (1 July – 16 September). Forthcoming projects include a residency at SEA Foundation, Tilburg, and a solo exhibition, ‘Relics in Reverse’, at PuntWG, Amsterdam in 2024.
mariefarrington.com
