What happens in a landscape after the land has gone through conversion to an industrial scale farming model?
What happens in a landscape after the land has gone through conversion to an industrial scale farming model?
14thJanuary – 11th February 2023
Opening Reception – Friday 13th January 6 - 8pm
This new body of work from Annie Hogg, comes as the result of the Tipperary Artist Residency Award with STAC, supported by Tipperary Arts Office. This work is a keen consideration of what happens in a landscape after the land has gone through conversion to an industrial scale farming model. Specifically a system of long established hedgerows.
On a Sunday morning in August 2021 diggers arrived and transformed a vibrant living place into one of silence and sterility. The native hedgerows and fields which delineated this place had been established nearly 300 years ago by the then English landowners. Over the last 100 years, the fields had been squatted and worked by a local farmer and later purchased by another. The hedges were lightly maintained and the fields gently farmed so that the soil remained alive. The space vibrated with the goings and comings of its non-human inhabitants. This place held all that life, until it was acquired by a large private company.
LOST is an examination of “the difference between non-intervention and taking human responsibility” (Masanobu Fukuokas), in the wake of such a happening. And asks how far can human and non-human communities be stretched in the face of these intensive farming and development models. It is a consideration of a phenomena called solastalgia – the distress, emotional or existential, caused by environmental change. Through installation, incorporating pigments rendered from that landscape, soundscape devised on site and sculptural elements, the work asks the questions of what cost, other than financial has this action had. The artist has used materials which were charred, ground and collected from this space in its present state to transform or at the very least confront the human grief and meaningfully mark that once, this place was alive.
Annie Hogg is a visual artist working with pigments foraged from all elements of the landscape, often charring found objects from the natural world as a votive action to create paint, ink and sculptures. Throughout her practice she utilise plants, soils and stones, shells and found bones. The materiality of these pigment sources is of great importance within the subsequent work.
After graduating in 2002 with a BA in sculpture from Aki College of Art in The Netherlands, she worked and lived on environmental protest camps and learned organic horticulture. Returning to a creative practice in recent years has allowed for these experiences to be woven into the practice, where themes such as ecocide, grief, folklore, solastalgia and acts of transformation are explored. Awards and support have been received from the Arts Council of Ireland, Irish Hospice Foundation & Creative Ireland, Tipperary County Council Arts Office and South Tipperary Arts Centre.
South Tipp Arts Podcast - https://youtube.com/watch?v=zq2DMsVn6H4&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE
