The trackmaker was a sluggish mover

Ceramic, archive photographs and video stills, 2026

This solo show, exhibited at the Irish Architectural Archive in Dublin and co-curated by Askeaton Contemporary begins with a 360 million year old set of footprints discovered on Valentia Island, South west of Ireland. Described as a sluggish mover, this creature left behind some of the earliest traces of animal life crossing from water onto land – a body learning to inhabit a new world on land. Using the motif of the tetrapod’s footprints, the exhibition reframes elements of the Archive’s collection, asking fundamental questions about the genealogy of architectural form.

At its centre is a cast replica of the Valentia trackway (on loan from the Geological Department at UCC), shown alongside archival photographs, architectural drawings, and sculptural works that trace acts of imprinting across geological and human time. Interwoven with these materials are my own ceramic and film works, including hoof-marked clay bricks, small tetrapods placed within architectural models, boot scrapers, and documentation of my ongoing process of self-building a home. A large ceramic digger bucket stands at the centre of the gallery – an object associated with both progress and destruction, now rendered fragile. The work was produced at part of a one year production residency spent at the archive in Dublin.