‘Symbols’
60cm x 40cm
Screenprint

FLAGS  (size A3) Risoprint

Expanded flags; beyond symbolism where colours dance.

Phenomenal Woman is the title of a collaborative project undertaken by Nicole McKenna and Caroline Coyle in 2015 (see separate posting). The Bog Queen Immersion project is a second phase of this collaboration and so the working group (Nicole McKenna and Caroline Coyle ) have adopted this title as their own.

The Bog Queen Immersion Project is site specific art project that seeks to actively contemplate the social construction of older women in society through immersion in bog pools and contemplative poetry. In reference to poet Seamus Heaney’s Bog Queen, this transformative project seeks to explore questions surrounding older women in society, specifically, their social construction; in how they see themselves; and in how they are viewed.

The Bog Queen Video  is a call to action for the Bog Queen Immersion Project. In this video and series of artworks woman is seen to immerse herself in therapeutic mineral rich peaty bog waters and to experience the catharsis of poetry and peat. The ancient Greeks used the term catharsis for the cleansing of both the body by medicine and the soul by art. Poetry by its very nature is a metamorphosis and an agent of change, as is peat and bog matter.  The act of immersion is accompanied by poetry including a poem written by Caroline Coyle entitled Paying Homage to the Bog Queen. This poem speaks of the spiritual transformation that occurs in tandem with the physical experience.

The Bog Queen Video is part of an installation. It is available to view on request. The musical score that accompanies this video is by entitled “Sleep”. It is by ”Mortal Morning (Michael Gardiner) is an experimental electronic music artist from Edinburgh, Scotland. Gardiner’s debut EP “The Lost Line”, inspired by his railway journeys, was released in December 2013.”

https://soundcloud.com/mortalmorningmusic

http://mortalmorning.bandcamp.com/

http:// vimeo.com/257004243

This is a body of work collected and documented over a period of one year.  The year long project will be completed in late 2018.

Phenomenal Women started as an independent study of widows in the Athlone area. Poet and researcher Caroline Coyle and I have continued to work together and have reused this title for our collective productions.

The work included a short film, a paper and a presentation around recent
conversations with women from St Mary’s Church Active Age Group and the
Widow’s Association in Athlone. Using poetry as a gateway in to these
communities and as a pathway of engagement, the women shared and vocalised their feelings around a huge range of topics, including: age, widowhood, friendship and what is important to them.

The works were presented at:

Women and Ageing: New Cultural and Critical Perspectives  (2015)
University of Limerick

Galway International Summer School on the Arts and Human Rights  (2015)
Galway University

WAM Research Summer School (2015)
University of Gloucestershire
UK

Clip from video  ‘Phenomenal Woman: A Poetic View of the Social Construction of Widows in Society’

 
The badge-wearing faithful were happy to oblige and agreed to have their photographs taken in the name of archiving tradition and beliefs.

A prayer book sized collection. View pdf here

A secondary project CRUX – sees real world placement of (upstream) matter mapped to the co-ordinates of X (crux) in Shannon-bridged Limerick city.

View pdf here

A printed book. 10×8″ wide format.

Nash’s Red Lemonade