NOWING Jennie Taylor
Ro s co mmon Arts C entre
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Catriona Gallagher, Sketches for an Artificial Forest, film still
NOWING Jennie Taylor
A text in response to Sketches for an Artificial Forest Catriona Gallagher Roscommon Arts Centre November 10th - December 23rd, 2023
Nowing
Jennie Taylor
On my way here, I noticed the veins
I use my veins as my map. I walk straight
on my hands were protruding. This
for roughly a third of the forest and then
isn’t unusual for me, but it was still
veer to the left. Alternative Intelligence
unexpected. My walk was long and
has been implemented. I am monitoring
necessary. Arriving here is like stepping
sensory impacts. I am hearing, touching,
into a room of unfamiliar logic and
and seeing in what feels like high
baked in arrangements. I am here to
definition. I am fully present in my body,
investigate a trial, and I am simply here.
in the plantation, in the immediate now. Internal, typically inaudible activities are louder than my breath. Sap flows through spruce tree trunks, and I can clearly hear this activity. Burrowing worms and gnawing weevils beat inside my ears. Moss appears neon. Pools of light, like fire.
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Nowing
Jennie Taylor
There’s a glitch in the forest’s network,
ground is increasing. I lie down flat.
and the trees receive back their own
My body takes up more space now. Yet,
warnings
Warnings
it feels less intrusive than my walking
of warnings. The sap seems to be in a
feet. The surface area of my body aligns
loop, and I can hear its sense of panic.
with the tantalising moss. I have as
Signals are charged with chemicals.
many pores as grass. I can see new blues
Every sense is active.
and purples beneath my skin. Aspiring
of
infestations.
bluebells. My report is in me. I am My
footsteps
of
attempting to realign my association
Moss
with this place but I am entangled.
is becoming sacred before me. My
I can only know it as me, and me it. I
awareness of my intrusion on the
must stay here for a while.
molecular,
8
are
precious
in
the
way
ground.
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Nowing
Jennie Taylor
The system is informed by any being
My veins are making a new forest.
or thing that enters it. I am here and
Designed from my insides. Not from
my thoughts expand, they can travel
above. No godly vision. Just blood and
oceans. I can see the present that was
oxygen and life. It is power. In me. I am
before and I can feel, hear, see, touch,
tubular like trunks, but I am not cut
fear, love this present, a layer on top
and I am still living. I remain horizontal
and weaving through any bit of space it
and let the work happen.
can find. I could eat it.
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Jennie Taylor
Nowing
At dusk, my skin sheds lots of little
My gestures grow. Each time I move,
flakes. They are like wood chips and
I create a root. My movement has
they keep me warm. My bedding is from
history. Recent and endless. Concentric
me. This body has fallen for this feeling.
rings define and gather my pulse. I
My limbs stretch and clasp onto bumps
secrete clear and stretchy mucus. It
and stumps in the ground. Hardness
spreads across the fresh forest floor.
against my flesh.
The ground licks it like a new lover. I inhale mucus back until it is in me and
The network is mesmerised by the
back out again. I’ll never be stacked
presence of my skin. It seeks for more,
and stored. My pulse nor a new ground
like a school of tiny fish with eager
wouldn’t allow it. You can’t store us.
mouths at the surface of the water.
(detail) dyed sheepskin, West of Ireland limestone fossil.
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About Roscommon Arts Centre's Visual Art Writer In Residence
Nowing
Jennie Taylor is the Roscommon Arts Centre’s Visual Art Writer in Residence for 2022/23. 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. Her practice draws from particle physics, Agential Realism and micro-histories. Areas of concern include proximity, locality, contemporary pedagogies, theorising empirical knowledge, and fictioning art history. 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. Jennie lives and works in Dublin, Ireland. Catriona Gallagher is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Athens, Greece. Her work probes at the collision of manmade and natural worlds, navigating overlooked details in our physical surroundings and their mirroring psychological landscapes. She uses moving image, drawing, writing, and research processes in site specific responses to place, with recent projects based on forestry plantations in Northumberland and the West of Ireland, plant metamorphs in Rome, and urban weeds in Athens. These reveal a mapping of more-than-human relations, in place over time. In 2016 Catriona co-founded A – DASH project space and studios in Athens. She gained an MFA from the Ruskin School of Art in 2018 and a BA in Sculpture from the University of Edinburgh in 2013. Her work has been screened and exhibited in the UK, USA, Russia, Ireland, Italy, Greece and France, and supported by Arts Council England, Creative Ireland and the Bridget Riley Foundation. 14
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Jennie Taylor
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