My practice is shaped by an understanding of Land as more than physical site but also as discursive, phenomenological and poetic.
The current work PLOT / CEAPACH explores the complexities of stories that are interlaced with a people’s relationship with Land, with each other and with the urgent need to make a living. Paintings, notebooks and site actions throw up dissenting voices about how land is valued, used up or conserved – and about who is responsible for it.
NEW WORK – Painting, Conversations and Film 2015 – 2018
Focusing on how a scientist (researching the potential use of seaweed as a bio fuel), inhabitant/s of Inis Oirr and investigative artist/s inhabit Sites of Ecological Tension, the work considers questions about power, labour and land use. This is interwoven with an exploration of Breughel the Elder’s Towers of Babel paintings, looking at how their strange mix of stability & instability appear to interrogate these same matters of power, labour and land use. Some of the film footage will be drawn from a new series of drawings and paintings of my own that reference these Breughel works.
BIO
Monica de Bath lives and works between the bog lands of Kildare and the Donegal Gaeltacht, Ireland.
She is a graduate of the National College of Art and Design, Dublin and has an M.A. in Visual Arts Practices from the Institute of Art and Design and Technology, Dun Laoghaire. She has received Awards from The Arts Council of Ireland, Kildare County Council and from 'Molkfabryk' Arts Space in Netherlands. Her work is in private and public collections.