All at Once Collapsing Together is a new body of work by Caoimhín Gaffney. Spanning across film, photography and writing, All at Once Collapsing Together uses fiction to imagine new ways of relating to the natural world. Images throughout the exhibition act as mirrors to the healing and relief the environment can offer, with narratives fraught with climate anxiety interrupting and reframing these as temporary and fragile.
All at Once Collapsing Together is a Butler Gallery National Tour travelling to Highlanes Gallery and Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre.
Images and text unfurl across the two-screen film, with fragmented depictions of the human figure trying to become part of the ecosystem again. Characters share sublime encounters with previously common birds like the corncrake and golden eagle, and speak as the voice of the earth itself to conjure a more-than-human perspective. The potential for the characters to become more-than-human themselves is explored further when the native carnivorous round-leaved sundew consumes one of the women into a bog. After she dissolves, she emerges as a new multiplicitous entity that spreads across the land.
Text pieces in the form of poetry and short stories reflect on the relief from trauma that immersion in the natural environment can bring but, because it is in distress itself, questions are raised for the protagonists about their sense of self and their place in the world around them.
The film and texts are without traditional narratives or character arcs, aiming to create an unsettled terrain that reflects the uncomfortable emotions and sensations they discuss. The work asks us to consider how important natural sensory information is to our sense of self: what does it mean for a sound to go missing from our ecosystem? When we no longer hear our native birds, which parts of ourselves will be forgotten?
Uphold presents three new editioned photographic prints from this body of work. These medium format photographs reflect on the restorative power of nature alongside the reality of climate change – and resulting climate anxiety – through a fragmented representation of the landscape. The photographs engage a quiet register to examine the subject and were shot throughout Ulster: on Rathlin Island and at Lough Sheelin and its adjoining bog in Cavan.
I can still taste the lake water in my mouth, feel it in my ears
Medium format photograph, 2023. Giclée printed on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, 35 cm x 28.7 cm, edition of 5.
Emerging too damp to catch fire.
Medium format photograph, 2023.
Emerging too damp to catch fire.
Medium format photograph, 2023. Giclée printed on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, 35 cm x 25.6cm, edition of 5.
Uphold is an iniative based in Northern Ireland, run by Household, that sells work by contemporary artists in a not-for-profit model: when you buy from Uphold you are directly supporting the artists and their work.
The bog released all that it was holding.
Medium format photograph, 2023. Giclée printed on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, 29cm x 35cm, edition of 5.
Short story: It all began with the turlough.
The turlough appeared now in early summer instead of its autumn arrival as the 30 years previous. Blow-ins would be forgiven for thinking it was a lake that belonged here, but locals know it had taken over the depressed field that lay off the main road beside the graveyard. A house, which no one had ever seen anyone living in, sat on the other side, with yellow gorse peering over it from the hill known as Carrick, or the Rock. The turlough’s water bounced light around the hills, with the neighbours opposite complaining that it was reflecting sunlight into their sitting room and moonlight right into their bedroom and, either way, they could see too much or they couldn’t see anything at all… [Read short story here]
This project was funded and supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Cavan Arts Office, Arts Council of Northern Ireland (through the National Lottery), Platform 31 and University of Atypical.