Sarah Iremonger : Artwork : Horizons 2014-24

2014 saw a return to painting and the development of collaborative work Horizons with poet Derek Mahon (1941-2020) a prose piece and poem were published as part of the collections 'Olympia and the Internet' 2017 and 'Against The Clock' 2018 by The Gallery Press.

This work is a response to the death of the image and the post-representational transcendental turn brought about by crisis and the loss of meaning in a climate-changing world. Haunted by the history and context of painting, I devise a systematic approach based on a colour map theorem where no adjacent colours are the same, rules are established to organise what colours will be used and where and how they will be painted, undermining any possibility of self-expression and confusing the figure-ground dichotomy. “I am like a one-eyed ambient robot crawling across the surface of the painting, eradicating any depth perception and diminishing aesthetic choices to chance encounters.” The results are reminiscent of AI-generated camouflage designs, where the image is hidden in a forest of visual noise. Images used include drawings based on screensavers, nature camouflages, photographs of Cork Harbour, Skellig Michael, Star Wars and the works of painters James Arthur O'Connor 1792-1841, George Barret 1728-1774 and Piet Mondrian 1872-1944.

A development into digital media sees drawings from Horizons transformed into digital 3-D landscapes with the help of Net Artist Daniel Murray, exploring ideas of situationlessness, presented at the ‘2nd Symposium on Digital Art in Ireland’ UCC June 2024.

This work includes a public participation project, Build Your Own Horizon/BYOH developed for Bealtaine Festival and Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre, 2022, exhibited at 'Fragments in Constellation' with Re:Group for the Skibbereen Arts Festival, 2022; exhibited at 'Coalescence' The Lavit Gallery Cork, 2024 and ‘Press Play’ Oliver Sears Gallery Dublin, 2019; and was funded through a Cork County Council Arts Grants Scheme Award, 2015.

Also see Texts The Lady of the Lake & Cantos-Open Horizons, both 2024

Statement

Entangled Horizon after ‘View of Powerscourt Waterfall’ by G. Barret 1760

2024

Watercolour on paper

50 x 69 cm

Exploring ideas of disrupted representation this painting uses a combination of digital and analogue procedures. The first stage was to make several digital versions of ‘View of Powerscourt Waterfall’ by G. Barret 1760 by changing the settings for detail and edges in Photoshop. Printing and tracing the images as line drawings and projecting them onto paper, turning them back to front and upside down to create a framework to hold the colours. Then painting one colour at a time ambiently across the entire surface so that the same colour never touches following the Six Colour Map Theorem.