Image copyright Dara McGrath
Launch 6pm Thu 13th April
Running 14 Apr-25 May
Roscommon Arts Centre
Circular Road, Roscommon
Opening Hours Tue-Fri 10am-5pm / Sat 2-5pm
Dara McGrath was named winner of the Roscommon Arts Centre Contemporary Photography Award, selected by Martin Parr, and this exhibition is part of the award.
Dara McGrath’s Project Cleansweep is a project that surveys the landscape of chemical and biological weapons in the British Isles and its continuing legacy, interrogating deliberate state and military encroachment into and appropriation (often secretive) of the landscape, essentially a massive ‘land grab’. This bucolic landscape today holds layers of narratives that the security apparatus of the state would prefer not told. It is an another representation of the impact of state and commercial interests on a rural setting; this has often caused long term problems of pollution and abandonment. The exhibition opened at Roscommon Arts Centre on April 13th.
Dara McGrath’s central concern lies in exploring transitional spaces, those in-between places where architecture, landscape and the built environment often intersect, and where a dialogue – of absence rather than presence – is created. His practice is driven by explorations of these charged, shifting entities – buildings that have come to the end of their functionality, the changing functionality of a landscape, human interruptions in the landscape – that exist in urban, rural and suburban contexts.
About the Roscommon Arts Centre Contemporary Photography Award
Judged by Martin Parr, this award was developed by curator Linda Shevlin. The aim being to provide a photographer with the opportunity to produce a body of work for exhibition at Roscommon Arts Centre as part of PhotoIreland Festival & Belfast Exposed Futures Gallery as part of Belfast Photo Festival. The artist was also supported by The Gallery of Photography through the provision of 30 hours free access to their Digital Studio for pre/production.