Notaeksa

Ceramic and photography, 2023

This work was commissioned and produced as part of a residency at Askeaton Contemporary located in the rural village of Askeaton in County Limerick, South West of Ireland. Here, I processed wild clay to replicate bricks found in the construction walls of a local Hellfire Club – a 17th century gentleman’s club where wealthy aristocratic men came together to hunt, drink, gamble and share stories. I was told that some of the bricks in the construction walls contained the hove prints of an animal, once imprinted when the wet bricks were left out to dry. I harvested the clay from the banks of Shannon estuary located close by to think about how the material holds traces of time trapped, where dead and living creatures are found, and are often preserved by it.

One of the many ghost stories told to me as a child emerged from the only other Hellfire club in the Dublin mountains; when club members were playing cards and a card drops on the floor and another member retrieves it only to notice that the members feet were of a deer, later revealing he was the devil in disguise. Different variations of the story unfold, sometimes the hove’s of a cow, other times a goat, other times a ram. These reproduced bricks, which hold the imprints of a local goat, comments to the entangled paths or traces between human and animal and the myths and stories that merge from both. The title NOTAEKSA the name of ASKEATON in reverse is imprinted on each brick. The work was exhibited in the village local hardware store.