daramcgrath

LisieKaty. Slovakian-Polish Border. Oct 2010

2010-12-19T15:59:00.000-08:00

Pyhrabruck Austrian-Czech Border Nov 2010

2010-12-19T15:09:00.000-08:00

Sudice. Czech-Polish Border. Nov2010-28

2010-12-14T15:19:00.000-08:00

Tlumaczow. Czech-Polish Border. Oct2010-08

2010-12-14T15:17:00.000-08:00

Tlumaczow. Czech-Polish Border. Oct 2010

2010-12-14T15:15:00.000-08:00

Vamossabadi. Hungarian-Slovakian BorderNov2010-07

2010-12-14T15:12:00.000-08:00

Vamossabadi. Hungarian-Slovakian BorderNov2010

2010-12-14T15:09:00.000-08:00

Paseky. Czech-Slovak Border Nov 2010

2010-12-14T14:54:00.000-08:00

Javorina. Slovak-Polish Border Oct 2010

2010-12-14T14:53:00.001-08:00

Holbova. Czech-Slovak Border Nov 2010

2010-12-14T14:52:00.000-08:00

Kornica. Czech-Slovak Border Nov2010

2010-12-14T14:51:00.000-08:00

Parassapuszta. Slovak-Hungarian Border Nov2010

2010-12-14T14:50:00.000-08:00

Kralovec. Czech-Polish Border Oct 2010

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Zwardon. Czech-Polish Border. Nov 2010 Kralovec. Czech-Polish Border. Oct 2010

Zyndranowa. Slovak-Polish Border Oct2010

2010-12-14T14:48:00.000-08:00

Rybriky. Czech-Slovak Border Nov 2010

2010-12-14T14:46:00.000-08:00

Boundaries-Photoworks on exhibit at Bank Street Arts Sheffield Nov 2010

2010-12-13T15:17:00.000-08:00

Boundaries-Photoworks on exhibit at CUBE Open Nov 2010. Centre for the Urban and Built Environment, Manchester, UK.

2010-12-13T15:11:00.000-08:00

Ordnance War+Architecture& Space. University College Cork , 16th Sept 2010- Presentation of my Maze Prison Photoworks

2010-09-13T14:05:00.000-07:00

Gender, Geography and Punishment in Comparative Perspective 22 - 23 June 2010,Christ Church, Oxford-Presentation of my Maze Prison Project

2010-06-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

Conflicting Views: Visual Culture, Conflict and Northern Ireland-I.A.D.T., Dublin-Presentation of my Maze Prison Project- June 11th 2010

2010-06-14T13:56:00.000-07:00

Found Objects-Mushroom Ice, River Oder,Poland. Feb 2010

2010-05-12T15:31:00.000-07:00

Super Massive Black Hole Magazine Issue:04 Focus Artist-April 2010

2010-05-03T14:24:00.000-07:00

Building+Design Magazine-April 2010

2010-05-03T14:05:00.000-07:00

New work from my work in progress-Boundaries-II April 2010

2010-04-27T15:14:00.000-07:00

Bratislava Jarovce- Austrian Slovakian Border-April 2010

2010-04-27T15:12:00.000-07:00

Zahorska Ves -Austrian Slovakian Border-April 2010

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Eberau Szenpeterfa-Austrian Hungarian Border-April 2010

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Novy Prerov-Austrian Czech Border-April 2010

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Cizov-Austrian Czech Border-April 2010

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Pamhagen-Austrian Hungarian Border-April 2010

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Vratenin-Austrian Czech Border-April 2010

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Kittsee-Austrian Slovakian Border-April2010

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Bratislava-Berg.Austrian Slovakian Border-April2010

2010-04-27T14:56:00.001-07:00

Mitrovice-Austrian Czech Border-April2010

2010-04-27T14:42:00.001-07:00

Gornja Radgona-Austrian Slovenian Border-April2010

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Hegyeshalom-Austrian Hungarian Border-April2010

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Neumarkt An Der Raab-Austrian Hungarian Border-April2010

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Dravograd-Austrian Slovenia Border-April2010

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CHURCHES-Charleville Christian Bible Fellowship

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Cove Street Christian Fellowship

2010-04-27T14:16:00.001-07:00

Found Objects-Forest. Gmund, Austria April 2010

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Found Objects-Quarry. Dravograd, Slovenia April 2010

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Found Objects-Blue House. Waterford, Ireland. Feb 2010

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Lives of Spaces at the Royal Institute of British Architects Gallery 1, London April 2010

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Lives of Spaces at the Ormeau Baths Gallery Belfast + my lunchtime talk 18th feb

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The Market Estate Project London March 6th 2010-video and more images soon!!

2010-02-09T15:56:00.001-08:00

CHURCHES-Cork Mosque

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Cork Christian Church

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Middleton Baptist Church

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Grace Christian Fellowship-Killarney

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Bantry Christian Fellowship Church

2010-02-09T15:06:00.001-08:00

My article in Building Material#19 Art and Architecture Journal-Nov 2009

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Selected Work in Mus-Mus.org. A collaborative photography webspace

2009-11-18T14:14:00.000-08:00

Select work for Issue #02 of Super Massive Black Hole-

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Boundaries-II. Continued-01. Most recent images from another work-in-progress Nov 2009.German-Czech-Austrian Borders

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2009-11-18T13:54:00.001-08:00

2009-11-17T15:15:00.000-08:00

Selected work in 'What Lies Beneath Nature and Urban Landscape in EU photography', part of FotoWeekDC 2009, Washington.

2009-11-01T14:06:00.000-08:00

Click here to see a slide show of my Maze work at Eco2009 Exeter Contemporary Open 17th Sept-4th Nov 2009

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Work In Progress Oct 2009-New sites of religious worship in Ireland

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CHURCHES-Calvary Baptist Church

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Calvary Chapel

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Gilgal Christian Church

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Glorious Family International Church

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Good News Christian Church

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Lee Valley Bible Church

2009-10-28T16:13:00.000-07:00

LightHouse Baptist Church

2009-10-28T16:12:00.000-07:00

New Life Community Church

2009-10-28T16:11:00.000-07:00

Open Door Christian Fellowship

2009-10-28T16:10:00.000-07:00

The Redeemed Christian Church of God-Cork

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The Redeemed Christian Church of God-Dublin

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Tower of Power Church

2009-10-28T16:03:00.001-07:00

Youghal Baptist Church

2009-10-28T16:01:00.001-07:00

My selectedwork as part of the Irish Representation at Venice Biennale of Architecture 2008-Farmleigh Gallery Dublin May 2009

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Boundaries-II.

2009-05-19T14:52:00.000-07:00

After almost a ten year break I have returned to the body of work 'Boundaries'. The reason is that in Nov 2007 the eastern ascession countries have now signed upto the Schengen Treaty. These include, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungry,Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia(excluding Malta and Greece as they have no land borders with the rest of the EU). Switzerland even though is not in the EU has a common travel policy like the rest. Here are some of the new images from the Polish/German/Czech borders. Although they are the first images of what I consider More to follow soon including some of the older ones and full info.

Boundaries-continued

2009-05-19T14:32:00.000-07:00

Wildenau Czech-German Border March 2009 Hundsbach-Siedlung Czech-German Border March 2009 Waldsassen Czech-German Border March 2009 Deutschheimseidel Czech-German Border March 2009 Forst Polish-German Border Jan 2009

Would the last person to leave please turn off the lights

2009-01-23T12:37:00.000-08:00

Recent thoughts about topography and finance- See my recent blog posting on the Irish Architecture Foundation website http://www.architecturefoundation.ie/2008/12/17/would-the-last-person-to-leave-please-turn-off-the-lights-dara-mc-grath/

Installation images from my participation at the Irish Pavillion at the 11th Venice Biennale of Architecture 2008

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Views from the one of the saloni rooms at the Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, former residence of the Duchess of Parma-Sept 2008 The installation consists of a TV shaped armature housing a slide projector, back-projected,that displays 24 looped photographs from the photographic series 'Deconstructing the maze'

Web Link to the Official Irish Biennale website

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Also includes a really cool video piece that brings you thru the exhibition space www.thelivesofspaces.com/

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Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, -View from the Academia Valporetta Station

Designers Conceptual drawing of the armature that housed my slide show

2008-11-16T14:24:00.000-08:00

Donnelly Mirrors

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Donnelly Mirrors, a subsidiary of US car parts supplier Magna International opened its factory in Naas, Co. Kildare, Ireland in 1968. Here the company manufactured mirrors and windows for automobiles all over the world. Due to fierce competition, high costs and falling sales the company closed in 2007 with the loss of 525 jobs when it moved much of its production to North America and Spain. As it stands currently in August 2008, the factory is a space in-between, a room half-stripped of its furniture, its properties disintegrating as time passes on. No longer the thriving employer in the locality, but neither a fully blank space either. It becomes a difficult arena to absorb and comprehend. What happens to such a space when its people, in this case its employees, are no longer needed there? What “qualities” does that in-between space that cross -over place of abandoned factory floors and the industrial landscape, take on? Does the process of the abandonment of industrial architecture also erase the memories, or are they possibly intimately wedded to the space that is being left behind? And can a deeper understanding of the “cavity”, (i.e. the space left behind) rather than the “solid”, also inform our understanding of the creation of architecture, or, in this case, the creation of anti-architecture?

2008-11-04T15:17:00.000-08:00

2008-11-04T15:13:00.000-08:00

2008-11-04T15:10:00.000-08:00

2008-11-04T15:09:00.000-08:00

Extract from Rachel Andrews essay on the Maze Project-work in progress-July 2008

2008-07-07T16:24:00.000-07:00

The topography of demolition. After the grey and the shush of the silence, the first thing you notice is the rabbits. Or, at least, the sense of their presence. A tail disappearing behind a bush. A frantic scatter at the edge of your vision. Often, you see only the traces. Droppings to the side of the sports areas, or in the thick, damp moss that grows along by the barbed wire and the high walls. All the time, though, you know they are there. Along – you hear later - with the wildcats and the buzzards. And the flowers. The wild gorse and foxgloves and nettles. Nature beginning the reclaim of its own. You admire the confidence - the sheer entitlement - of the encroaching wildlife, to its place in this space of dominance and containment. This is the terrain of men, carved out of rules and regime. It is a place of signs and warnings. ‘STOP, HOLD, LOCK.’ ‘Switch off engine when parked in airlock.’ Of pictures – guard dogs and prison officers. ‘CAUTION, we patrol the area.’ It is no place for the soft scatter of a furry bunny. We first come to the Maze on the bright of a blustery summer afternoon, expecting, not rabbits, but the whispers of history. The approach of the landscape, the loom of its watchtowers a silent insult against the bustling grey-blue of the sky, suggests the story of these memories. We have seen these towers before, framed in front of us on our television screens, in the days when the North and all its troubles formed a blurry backdrop to our growing lives. We know what they have to say. Inside, we are certain, the buildings will speak. They will tell us: “Here died Bobby Sands.” “Here, the prisoners escaped.” “Here Billy Wright was shot.” We know the story already. Emotion. Echoes. Superlatives. All we have to do is observe it, and write it down. Here and here and here. *** I saw where Bobby Sands died, there in the corner of a hospital cell. I stood in the corridor and stared in, imagining. For a moment, some kind of feeling flickered, then went out. Now, all I remember is the blankness. That, and the cold of the colours, grey and green and yellow. *** The Maze had a story to tell me allright, but it was not the story I had come to hear. It was a story of concrete, solid, reinforced. Of razor wire, scrambling sixteen feet upwards, ten across. Of steel, shutting behind me in a doorway. It was a story of the brutal shape and structure of a building constructed cheap and fast, in half the usual time it took to build a prison, a hasty solution to controlling an out of control problem. It was a story, surely, of numbed, interrupted humanity, because no humanity could ever have been expected here. Now the story is changing again. All day, the hit and the spike and the crack of the digger reduces it, breaks it apart. From block to slow block, the JCBs trundle, focused, relentless, long arm extended. Buildings converted to bodily parts. By the time I arrive at the prison, seven months into the demolition process, six H-Blocks are gone. Next time I come to the Maze I will see only a no man’s land. Or a no place. And what does a no place have to say? We are unfamiliar newcomers, and we take the long way round. Left off the Dublin Road, following the sign for Maze-Moira. Right up Trench Road, towards the Down Royal Racecourse. Over the humped back bridge into Mazetown. Red-bricked houses, small, neat, in rows; later they come larger, detached, retreated into middle-class developments. Churches: Methodist, Presbyterian, a Masonic Lodge, an Orange Hall. Flags, in doorways, from entrance gates. The flag of St George. The Union Jack. Through Mazetown. Past the bigger, newer estates, all glistening sports cars and SUVs. Past the famous Down Royal: ‘Home of the Northern Ireland Festival of Racing’, and the pub, Gowdy’s at The Racecourse. Round one corner, then another. Swing right onto Bog Road, twisting, winding. Notice the signs, out the backs of the alongside houses. For Sale: Tvs, Hi-Fis, Cars. Nursery schools. After School Activities. Small initiatives, but the beginnings of a nudging identity change for this area, and the others, that have been defined by their position in the shadow of the Maze, onto which their gardens back, and where their people went to work - as joiners, kitchen staff, prison officers - over 30 years. On down Bog Road, towards the crossroads. After a while, the houses thin out, then disappear, and then are replaced, by a line of wire fencing , the first ominous sign, and then the fence changes into the grey, corrugated blockage of the outer visitor’s gate, overgrown and sprawling, a floodlight peering down, and then the road goes on and we take another turn, and then, on our right: a concrete wall, a sentry post, flags fluttering, barbed wire. The main entrance gate, wire steel, a kind of cage. And signs. Maze Regeneration Site, Reinvestment and Reform Initiative. DANGER. Demolition in Progress. KEEP OUT. Keep Out. Time was, visitors went only slowly inside the Maze; the women waiting in the cold and the worry to see their menfolk, not knowing would they be allowed in today, tonight, tomorrow, lips set tight with fear for their children left behind on their own. It took hours to get in and the same to get out, through all the checks and double checks and the monitoring. But in the half-space of time and inactivity between closure and demolishment, the prison opened its gates, not freely, still cautious, and the visitors came quick and curious: the residents, from neighbouring village Halftown, photos on their walls as bemused proof, the archaelogists, the photographers, the artists, the school tours. Former prisoners, back and forth, analysing, discussing the future. One time, just like that, we almost run into Bik McFarlane, the name, of course, notorious to us. The ones who broke out now strolling back in. We drive up, car nose nudging against the gate, and a man saunters out to greet us. For the moment, we are welcome, permission granted through the ponderous structures of the fledgling Northern bureaucracy, which will later, in the way of such bureaucracies, make a sudden, swift decision to pull us out. The man drags open the gateway, and we are inside. I stand out of the car, my back to the entrance, and an openness spreads out in front of me. The Maze complex is 360 acres, two and a half miles long, a distance which, when it comes all together, is hard to process. I try to make sense of the windswept bleakness, reminded of another, urban environment: the dwarfing apartment blocks and wide streets of post-Communist Berlin, the last place I felt so strongly and uneasily the blank indifference and oppression of my surroundings. I look at the security hut on my left and the men waving out at us. Later we will join them for tea and biscuits, but for now we say our hellos and push on, our time organised, limited. I look at the bricked Toilet hut on my right. Further on, there is another hut, large and sickly green, with a great pushdown entrance. The old car processing site, where vehicles were assessed and inspected. And after that, all I see is wasteland. Mounds of ordered rubble, in their high, separate bundles, of wood and steel and concrete. Flattened, bent-over grass, the outline of a building still traced on top of it. A lone twig tree growing up and out of a crunching expanse of gravel and stones. Further again, there is the inside prison wall, half in pieces, cut short in its snaking journey around and through. It’s not hard to describe this place. We all reach for the same metaphor. Like a bomb site. It looks just like a bomb site now. We walk. The Maze is not for the walker. Prisoners and visitors alike were driven in windowless vans, deliberately disorientating, across the long space from one H Block to another, from workshop to visiting block and back again. But I need to get my own sense of this disappearing place where everything looks the same. The watchtowers stare down at us, aloof and unmoved, as we turn one way, then the next. In a while, we will go into the Maze Cellular, where the H-Blocks are, but first, we climb, through a jungle of gorse and trees, over mossy ground, into Long Kesh, the beginning of it all, where the young and not so young went when internment got the go ahead, and the men were taken in off the streets. Long Kesh was left for dead long ago, after the H Blocks were built and the prisoners moved on. On a January morning, months after my first summer visit, the compound lies silent and empty in the piercing cold, its slumber broken only by the occasional panicked rattle of a passing bird, or the just discernible swhoosh of the cars on the nearby motorway. The Nissen huts, what’s left of them – for they are also being demolished – are unreachable, encased by looping, snarled barbed wire, and shrouded by the steadily advancing wilderness. But they don’t take much imagining. Low, rounded rooves of corrugated iron set on a black bricked base. A wooden door, swinging and jagged. Here, they crammed the men in, 40 to a hut. Shoved, one on top of the other in bunk beds, colder inside than out, freezing by day, freezing all night. Like for animals. I write it down. A concentration camp, for all the world. Except for the nature, Long Kesh is all black. Once inside the Maze, we see colours. Searing turquoise. Deep, dull red. Pink traces on grey. You come upon them suddenly, a strange surprise. They grab you because they are unexpected, and somehow that makes it all the more unsettling. There is no comfort in the sign, red on white, at the Visitor’s Centre: DANGER. Or in the splash of sunny yellow at the doorway: NO PERSON SHOULD PASS THE YELLOW LINE WHILE GATE IS IN MOTION. Inside, the pale pastel pink of the walls and tables hints at a false cheery, holiday-camp atmosphere, but the blue chairs, crushed three, four deep up against each other, reminds you that the encounter, across a table, between husband and wife, mother and son, was a controlled one. Half an hour, an hour, of eyes up, eyes down, hand-holding, crying, laughing, always aware of the presence at your back, at your front. Time’s up now. Move on. Worst of all are the baby chairs. Eight of them in a small, separate room. Glaring yellow against the faded walls and floors. Scattered around tiny tables, themselves an upturned blue and white. Fairground colours, all smiles and waves, trying to rectify the unrectifiable. Like the flowers and berries in the prisoners’ gardens, or the carefully chalk-drawn goalposts in the sports areas, the chairs are all wrong. They are close-your-eyes pathetic. I am a new mother, and I find I cannot bear that children knew this closed-in place. The sins of the fathers, tumbling down on the heads of the babes below.

Here is the the sequence of images from my slide show at the European Night, La Nuit de l’Année, Rencontres d’Arles, Arles, France July 2008

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2008-07-07T16:13:00.000-07:00

2008-07-07T16:07:00.000-07:00

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Exhibition at Priorat-April2008

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Weblink to interview/video/photoworks by Idensitat with Dara McGrath.Feb 2008

Deconstructing the maze-Mounds

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Beijing Billboards,Sept 2007

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IDENSITAT'07-installation/intervention photos-continued

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IDENSITAT'07-installation/intervention photos

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The intervention photographs from Boundaries series at Idensitat'07 in the Priorat region of Catalunya

Boundaries-Priorat. Barcelona-Feb2008

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BOUNDARIES-Idensitat '07
Boundaries is a long term project that documented the transitional state of the borders with the European community
The images stimulate the connection between E.U. borders and ones own ‘local borders’: ideas of inclusion and exclusion, identity within ones own community and the relationship within the wider sphere of the European context. Initially created for the context of the white cube, these photographs have emerged over time as site –specific installations that seek to delineate the borders of communities within the urban setting and in this instance more recently as an intervention within a rural context to highlight the differences with two competitive wine growing areas,south of Barcelona in the Priorat region. Ten separate images appeared and reappeared on the posters around both the urban and rural settings that intersect the borders at eye-level that engaged directly with the observer and in this case the busy rural passer-by.

The photographs here show the installation/intervention in the wine regions surrounding of Priorat,Barcelona in Jan 2008. Demarking the Denominacion. de Origen.Calificada. and the
Denominacion. de Origen regions, The D.O.C and the D.O.

Deconstructing the maze-photos-cont-05

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Deconstructing the maze-photos-cont-04

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Deconstructing the maze-photos-cont-02

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