The Woodland Symposium is a collaborative project which facilitates artists in making an artistic response to ecological activism by engaging in a slow-art response to the changing ecology of the site of Interface in Connemara. Over the last three years, artists Brett Sroka, Christine Mackey, Linda Schirmer, Noelle Gallagher, Helena Doyle and Sarah Roseingrave have immersed themselves in the site, an environment which has gradually revealed its complexities over the years. 

On each iteration of the Woodland Symposium the artists have been mentored by ecologist Marie Louise Heffernan and archaeologist Michael Gibbons. Through this extended engagement, the artists have built a rich understanding of - and relationship with - the forest and with the wider area.  They have visited and revisited the adjacent fragment of ancient oak forest at Derryclare Wood and explored ancient fragments of human habitation in the blanket bogs of Connemara.

Their relationship with this unique place has expanded to involve acts of care and activism, so that the lines have become blurred between the ecological activity of restoration and the artistic response to that activity. It is envisaged that participants will step in and out of the project over many more years, enabling an elasticity in the dynamic and the ranges of responses. This exhibition marks the first off-site public presentation of this body of work which for the most part has been created in- and on-site, with the trees, the soil, the light; the water, the sound, the materials of the forest.

An artist in Connemara creates under the wings of two greats: philosopher and mystic John Moriarty and cartographer Tim Robinson. These two in their own ways respectively walked and mapped the land step by step and stone by stone. Connemara was deeply and closely known by each of these men.

John Moriarty asserts that if we are to build a relationship with the earth, instead of searching for the holy grail, that we should seek the Silver Branch, the Karmic Digging Fork and the Tenebrae Harrow. Silver Branch perception invites us to see the otherworld in our home, the extraordinary in the ordinary, where ‘every bush is a burning bush’, perceiving this world as if for the first time. Moriarty insists on a bearing of our own responsibility in engaging with the earth as essential practice for contributing to ecological reparation.

The Woodland Symposium project facilitates a long-term engagement with a damaged place, in which the participating artists have undertaken to carry the branch, the fork and the harrow. The works of art are not separate from the place, but come from the place and their evolution takes place in tandem with the slowly changing ecology of the forest. 

Photos: Tom Flanagan