About Visions of an Unsettled Earth
Visions of an Unsettled Earth (exhibited 4th May – 14th July 2023) explores ideas of temporality, transience and transformation within our current epoch, the Anthropocene. The exhibition brings together new and recent works made by artists Debbie Godsell, Fiona Kelly and Sarah O’Flaherty and positions humanistic interactions as a continuous collaboration and negotiation with the dirt beneath us.
We live on a restless Earth and to think in terms of deep time; specifically in terms of land use can be a method of reimagining our problematic present; countermanding its hasty alterations and instabilities, with older, slower stories of making and unmaking. An awareness of the land brings us to consider our historical inheritance, mythologies, and the inheritance for the beings and aeons and that follow.
Godsell, Kelly and O’Flaherty describe landscape as a three-dimensional shared reality in which they explore through themes of land use, myth, entropic forces and the disintegration of matter. Landscapes are propped, underpinned and held, unable to support themselves under continuous weight. Visions of an Unsettled Earth is a timely exhibition examining how we as the ‘Anthro’ can support the Earth beneath us, whilst also supporting each other in unstable times. In the wake of what is lost, the three artists, materially and aesthetically rebuild and assemble the detritus of now, to narrate a concrete hope for the future.
This will be the third evolving iteration of collaborative exhibition between Godsell, Kelly and O’Flaherty. Through the success of their last public showing, all three Artists work were acquisitioned by the Crawford Art Gallery & IMMA for Your National Collection 2021 and since displayed together in Botanica, The Art of Plants, curated by Michael Waldron, Crawford Art Gallery 2022.
Artist Bio: Fiona Kelly
Fiona Kelly makes sculptural objects and printed matter with the aid of her foraged, ever-expanding archive of waste. This archive holds a compendium of debris; its natural and manmade constituents are altered and arranged to narrate human interactions with land and a demarcation of time.
Kelly holds a MA from Crawford College and is continuing her research into the contemporary narrative of land use as a PhD candidate at NCAD, Dublin (2021-2026). Recent exhibitions include A Demarcation of Time, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (Solo); The point of truth, knowledge & beauty, Künstlerhaus Dormund, Germany; The Space We Occupy, Solas Nuá, Washington DC & IAC, New York, USA; A Temporary Iteration, (Solo) Sirius Arts Centre, Cork; Botanica; The Art of Plants, Crawford Art Gallery, IE; New Perspectives. Acquisitions 2011–2020, National Gallery of Ireland; Land of Some Other Order, Lavit Gallery, IE and The Mouth of a Shark, Edinburgh Printmakers Gallery, UK.
Kelly’s work is housed in the public collections of the National Gallery of Ireland, the Crawford Art Gallery, and the Jyväskylä Art Museum, Finland. Her current research within contemporary narrative of land use is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland (2021).
Artist Bio: Sarah O'Flaherty
Sarah O’Flaherty makes objects and images. The images are lens based. The objects are sculptural and made from materials that are, in the main, sourced from the natural world and augmented with materials more akin to the built environment. Plaster, cement, iron etc. Current explorations revolve around issues surrounding our increasingly vulnerable state. The language that is embedded within materials and objects is harnessed, the process is slow and deliberate. Precarious both visually and physically.
She studied at the CIT Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork, the LIT Limerick School of Art & Design and the Royal College of Art, London. Recent group shows include ‘Botanica, The Art of Plants, Crawford Gallery, Cork,’ 2022, New Threads, Crawford Art Gallery, 2021 ‘Encountering the Landscape’, VISUAL, Carlow (2018); ‘Visions of Half-Light’, Town Hall Gallery, Macroom (2018); ‘Here and Now’, Town Hall Gallery, Macroom (2016). She was awarded the Royal Hibernian Academy Conor Fallon Sculpture Award in 2012.
Works are held in private and public collections and most recently works in the national collection and Cork County Council’s collection. She teaches at the Limerick School of Art and Design, TUS.
Artist Bio: Debbie Godsell
Debbie Godsell studied at the TUS Limerick School of Art & Design and the MTU Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork where she graduated with an MA in Art 2002. She makes work that is primarily lens-based and has evolved to produce outcomes both in two dimensional works, sculptural forms and video. Interrogating and re-evaluating themes of identity and belonging through our contested historical relationship with land are the motivational forces underpinning each work. New outcomes explore a peripatetic culture clash of history, tradition, custom and ethno cultural notions.
Debbie’s work is collected by the National Gallery of Ireland, the OPW and the Crawford Art Gallery as part of the National Collection. She is a recipient of the Arts Council Visual Arts Bursary Award 2022, Cork County Arts Bursary 2022, Cork County Arts Ballinglen Artist Residency 2019, Cork County Arts Office, Tyrone Guthrie Bursary 2017 Award.
Recent solo shows include Flail Cork Printmakers Studio Gallery 2023, Residues, Grilse Gallery Kilorglin, 2022.
Recent group shows include Body works Crawford Art Gallery 2023, Radharc, Perspectives in Print, Crawford Art Gallery 2023, Botanica, The Art of Plants, Crawford Gallery, 2022. Expanded Graphic Studio Dublin 2022, New Threads Crawford Art Gallery, 2021, Visions of an Unsettled Earth three person exhibition, Sirius Art Centre, 2020.
Solo Exhibition, Source Art Centre, 2024. Solo Exhibition Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre 2025.