Golden Fleece Award 2011
The Golden Fleece Award is an artistic fund established as a charitable bequest by the late Helen Lillias Mitchell. The annual award aims to support and promote a wide range of artistic practices in Ireland. This is the tenth anniversary for the award.
Edifice is a project I have been working on since 2009. From abandoned hillside cottages to relics of great architectural optimism, the images in this series explore aspects of our collective history; memories of conflict and struggle, of fortunes lost and gained, monuments that recall a romantic and heroic past.
The collection exists as collodion plates, photographs on glass (ambrotypes) and metal (tintypes). The process was invented in 1851. These one-of-a-kind images are made directly on glass and tin plates that have been coated with chemicals, exposed in camera while still wet, and developed on the spot. Each image is a unique handmade artefact.
The spectral images in this series invite the observer to revisit familiar sites, such as the grandiose ruins of Ducketts Grove, Wilton House and Ballymoon Castle and endeavour to reveal an alternative manifestation of these remarkable structures.
I look forward to putting this award towards progressing the work of this project over the forthcoming year. I am grateful to the generosity of Helen Lillias Mitchell and for her passion in furthering the development of the arts in Ireland.
Huntington Castle, Tintype (wet plate collodion)
