Evidence of the rasping, clawing deformation of the landscape, the visceral human individual in the midst of burgeoning idea of progress-as-building, propped up by finance-as-economics…the project stands as an extraordinary warning of the future that was then yet to come.1

SOUTHERN CROSS (1999-2002) was a critical response to the rapid development witnessed in the Republic of Ireland at the turn of the new millenium. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) brought about the largest economic transformation in the history of a country, which never experienced the full impact of the Industrial Revolution to create the so-called, ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy. Completed in the Dublin and county region, the project critically mapped the spaces of development and finance. The series, site, explored the transitory spaces between ‘what was’ and ‘what will be’ and ‘being’ and ‘becoming’– the construction sites – representing the birthing grounds of the ‘new Ireland’. Prospect, surveyed the State’s first financial district, the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) – a flagship of global capital and architectural embodiment of the globalised ‘New Ireland’. The title, inspired by the location of the Republic of where the project was completed and referencing a new religion of capital, represents the economic aspirations and profound changes of a country on the western periphery of Europe, SOUTHERN CROSS presented the newly globalised landscape, being transformed in response to migrations and flows of predatory global capital.

 

The project was the recipient of the inaugural Artist’s Award 2001 from the Gallery of Photography, Dublin. A full-colour catalogue was produced (Gallery of Photography/Cornerhouse (UK) 2002) to accompany the exhibition which opened in March 2002. This was generously supported by the Arts Council of Ireland & the trade union, SIPTU and included a poem by the late and greatly missed Irish-born writer, Philip Casey titled, ‘Implications of a Sketch’ and a response written by Dr. Justin Carville, titled, ‘Arrested Development’.

1. Prof. Colin Graham, ‘Motionless Monotony: New Nowheres in Irish Photography’, 2012: 15.