fables of a drone-fly Jennie Taylor
A text in response to An Animate Land: Marian Balfe, Laura Fitzgerald, Miriam O’Connor 1
Miriam O’Connor, Mart Day, Roscommon Mart, photograph / postcard
fables of a drone-fly Jennie Taylor
A text in response to An Animate Land: Marian Balfe, Laura Fitzgerald, Miriam O’Connor Curated by Naomi Draper
Roscommon Arts Centre May 20th - July 1st 2022
Jennie Taylor
A big-eyed being found itself in all sorts of places, but mostly on surfaces, unwanted but present. It took regular trips to local businesses and organisations. It sometimes relied on a steady and resilient tractor for adventures. The tractor would park for months, units of its time as tangible as its pace. At one point the pace of the tractor worried this big-eyed being. It feared it would miss out on an upcoming trip. Out of panic, it started to manufacture fake holiday photographs, a click of each vista with a blink. A wildly connected drone-fly, stylish, attractive and uncannily like a revered honeybee, bar its lack of waist and sting. From its viewpoint, the land looked like a picture. A midday wander would turn into a confusing adventure. Seemingly simple, small and lost, it found itself in cow hair one minute and cloud lumps the next. Or mist. Or pigment depicting cloud. Fictional 6
fables of a drone-fly
pigment and real hairs. Land is the thing and landscape is of the thing. The fly forgets this. It flies into things. Its size makes this even more confusing. Never out of road. Bullish but tiny. Bits of its wing or antennae were at risk. They could break off and become part of the landscape. On what felt like an ordinary day, it realised that it was in an illusionary place for over an hour, which explains why it lost the sensation of a breeze but felt the comfort of being bound by stuff, held up by matter and the support of a distilled sense of time. Striving to be like a self-supporting tractor, all heart and no chassis, it enjoys these misunderstandings. What’s in a frame anyway? Same goes for interior spaces. Very confusing. Their lights are like the sun, weaved with tubular lungs. The ceiling as sky and the floors are streets. It swirled and landed in a space, thinking surfaces were 7
Jennie Taylor
fables of a drone-fly
troughs and forms were machinery, only to eventually shorten its loop of flight until it came close to feeling its final minutes. A fellow species’ abrupt desire for air caused the exit door to swing open. It freed itself out of the gallery; a frame, a viewfinder, a confusing thing. Only to look back at it every so often and to thank it for the mix up. For the cross over and for the world inside world.
and exchanged approvals quietly with each other, letting whispers make waves towards the selected. Some rattled and chased nods and smiles. Others snapped their heads back with laughter and wine in hand. With volume and pride. Anyone who sought the gaze of this pair, gulped their first approval in one go and walked around with their mouths open, drooling and dry and desperate.
It landed oceans of tarmac away. Settling into a corner, it wondered how it would ever see unframed places the same again. Now aware of its own view through bulging and limited eyes, it made an announcement there and then, ‘I am artist! Even now, while I am idle! And land is landscape even when it is not!’ To celebrate, it powered back into the gallery, kissing in corners evoking teenage disco cloakrooms. Luckily, it felt like it had many stories to mimic. Meanwhile, another ocular pair sat on a classic exhibition bench
The fly was distracted playing with its flight. In and out of the gallery, it attempted consistent horizontal paths, close to the ground. It mimicked bumps in soil and concrete alike. It enjoyed the idea of echoing existing matter. Informing its flight, the ground’s silhouette was a blueprint for where to go. The details of existing grounds were hard to keep up, so it soon ventured into a featureless sensation of sky. Falling between thought and reaction, the fly fell short of reason. It collapsed into muddy
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fables of a drone-fly
half-thought, not finishing sentences and stumbling over its ankles. It was tired. Wings failing to mimic a honeybee’s unwavering focus. It thought thoughts that it believed to be verifiable action. Thought is action, it would think. It was this shortcoming that made it feel invisible. The thoughts were fierce but gone. It fell for satisfaction of clips, gossip and aimless chat leading into digital mud. Thick, energy consuming stuff that would slow it down. Occasionally it saw mud for what it was. It was during this thought, unremarkable and true, that it flew back out the gallery door for good, to make efforts, straighten up, make phone calls and buy trash. ‘I am participating!’ it thought to itself. All the while, longing for this delusion of perfectly crafted, lush and fertile camps of thought. Its delusions that were once true, now rest as a holiday home, hired in its head, idle most of the time and used during magnificently brave and gutsy afternoons. 10
Laura Fitzgerald, Too big’ series, (Yellow field with bales without horses’ heads), Sharpie markers on offer in Eason’s on Katie Watchorn paper, 49 x 36.5cm, 2020. Photograph by Paul Gaffney.
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Marian Balfe, It’s a hole, 2022, oil on paper; image courtesy of the artist.
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About Roscommon Arts Centre's Visual Art Writer In Residence
fables of a drone-fly
Jennie Taylor is the Roscommon Arts Centre’s Visual Art Writer in Residence for 2022. During this time Jennie is invited to write critical texts on selected exhibitions and projects happening across the county. The intention of this residency is to allow writers to experiment with their writing style and explore new ways of disseminating their work. The writings will be available at Roscommon Arts Centre and online as they are published. Jennie Taylor is a fiction and arts writer. A graduate of Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology, in 2014 she completed her MA, Art in the Contemporary World, National College of Art & Design. She has published her work in Critical Bastards Magazine, The Stinging Fly and Visual Arts Newsletter. She thinks through material and uses photographed objects as textual tools to accompany texts. Areas of concern include proximity, locality, contemporary pedagogies, theorising empirical knowledge, and fictioning art history. Jennie lives and works in Dublin, Ireland. Marian Balfe graduated from the National College of Art and Design with a Joint Honours Degree in Fine Art and History of Art in 2015. Prior to this she studied Architecture in UCD, receiving a BSc in Architectural Science. Marian’s practice is expansive & she uses various methodologies including painting, writing, graphic design & photography. Laura Fitzgerald is a visual artist working in drawing, painting, installation, video, and text. A graduate of both the National College of Art and Design, Dublin and Royal College of Art, London, she is a recipient of the Visual Arts Bursary Award (Arts Council of Ireland) for 2021-22 and a Golden Fleece Award in 2021. Miriam O’Connor is from Cork and was educated at Technological University, Dublin and later completed a Research Masters at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art Design & Technology, Dublin (2011). In her photographic practice she draws inspiration from the sights, sounds and language of everyday life. She is curious about the multifaceted roles photography occupies in culture.
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Land is the thing and landscape is of the thing. 16