Healing Work completed during a month's residency at MART gallery, Dublin, Ireland, 2015
The work created during the residency period focuses on the re-generation of the Irish Red deer, and draws on Irish culture; traditional herbal medical remedies, mythical fertility gods, the folkloric understanding of the protective and re- generating powers of the hawthorn tree. The birth of new hybrids is illustrated by the composite imagery being transformed into futuristic forms born from kaleidoscopic imagery representing cell growth. Our changing environment reflects technological developments and human population growth, resulting in the destruction of land, the extinction and endangerment of animals, and genetic deformities. In this negative reflexivity, the very same scientific progress that led to the destruction of our world has ironically created the idea of ‘The frozen zoo’. Stem cell regeneration is being considered by scientists as a future method of regrowth of limbs and organs and for the re-generation of endangered species.