‘M a p s’

Scale is shifting, ambiguous in much of my work. After the aerial Aran drawings, I moved further away, creating a surface that reads as satellite Earth photograph, and as ‘map’, like the mediaeval cartographers seeking to portray a world they hoped existed, or thought should exist, or feared. Yet they are paintings, with the ‘given’ nature of maps just a starting point. Colour and form are in conversation with the diagrammatic additions and words, which allude to stark human realities. They juxtapose the beauty of our Earth with what we are doing to it, what we have done in it, and what we might do.

'Collateral Damage' 106x76cm — **'Collateral Damage'** 106x76cm

‘One discovery for me at the conference was the art of Tom Weld which almost instantly connected with me; it is composed of faux ‘satellite imagery’ on which he superimposes details of borders, violence and expropriation. I felt it a brilliant method of exposing the inhumanity and barbarity of violence and injustice and its haphazard nature – haphazard in the sense that I may be on one, safe, side of a border but an accident of history or geography could have placed me in the epicentre of violence… (– and those at this epicentre could have been ‘safe’ like me.) (I am not saying everyone will connect with it as I did but it deserves to be seen.)’

Rob Fairmichael

Coordinator, Irish Network for Nonviolent Action Training & Education.

Part of his review of the Limerick ‘World Beyond War’ conference, October 2019.