ndit co ions nd a a p s p l i m e r d e t t e d r e m i l s p p a a n s d n c o o i t i n d Abridged 0-20 Abandoned Clare Deirdre O’Mahony Abridged 0-20 liedterms pp an a d s c n o o i n t d i i d t i n o o n c s d a n p a p l s i e d m r t e DEIRDRE O’MAHONY ABRIDGED 0 – 20: ABANDONED CLARE Contents Page 4 / Greg McCartney Page 5 to 6 / Deirdre O’Mahony Page 7 to 44 / Photographs Page 45 to 46 / Deirdre O’Mahony Curriculum Vitae Page 47 / Abridged / Rationale Page 48 to 49 / Abridged / History 0 - 20 0 - 20 ABRIDGED 0 – 20 ABANDONED CLARE ABANDONED CLARE ‘BAD’ NOSTALGIA OR RE-MEMBERING? ell it’s about abandonment. Not always urban are visually articulated and explored. he opening of the Abandoned Clare Agri-culture has inspired the local social, cultural a physical abandonment either. It’s the The social implications of rural abandonment exhibition in the X-PO in Kilnaboy, North and economic logic In County Clare. In pre’ Wabandonment of hopes, of dreams, of further isolate and marginalize vulnerable rural TClare is appropriate on many levels. The Celtic Tiger’ times when property was cheap, expectation. It’s the abridgement of a people populations, contribute to poorer demographics former post office closed in 2003 and like some people from all over the world with interests in and a place that is the thing. As it’s put in Citizen and aging rural populations, lead to a loss of land of the buildings documented in Abandoned ecological self-sufficiency and alternative ways Kane: ‘forty-nine thousand acres of nothing but management skills, knowledge and tradition, Clare, it has since changed function and of living settled in the region. The formation of scenery and statues. I’m lonesome.’ People need and the loss of social and community structures purpose. Reopened as a durational public art a co-operative school in Roxton near Corofin was more than history, they need a future and they can lead to adverse health factors including project in 2007 it performs as a socio-cultural evidence of social movements in the locality in need to believe they can have a future. All too depression and alcoholism. Abandoned buildings prism, reflecting the interests of incomers and the early 1980s. Called ‘the Shed‘ the school was often people in authority forget that, particularly and the accompanying abandoned land can also longstanding residents and aspects of the local later expanded to include a shop, a restaurant, so it seems those in government in recent times. have an adverse effect on the environment. and the global, much as the post office used to a playgroup, a window manufacturing company Fortunately there’s always someone even in do when it served the diverse communities of and a Liscannor stone workshop. In time, children the most challenging of circumstances who O’Mahony has already examined the ecological the area. The old post office had become an grew up, people moved and in 2009 the only part will keep trying even if the odds are stacked effects of abandonment through the public abject and forlorn reminder of rural conviviality. of the complex in use was the window company against them. And a good thing there is too. We artwork, Cross Land, an exploration of the Now reframed as an artwork it functions as an and the stone workshop, now used as a car repair need the dreamers and the fools. We need our regulatory, ecological and physical effects of active reflexive space providing a location for the shop. The abandoned school building may once Xanadus and our Towers of Babel. So whilst on changes in farming practices as evidenced collective public consideration of place-based more find a new purpose as it expands to include one hand Abandoned Clare is about failure and in the growth of Hazel scrub in the Burren. knowledge. car dismantlers. The story is not over, simply defeat it also is implicitly about the strength Abandonment of land may also lead to the loss taking a new turn. of the human spirit. We’re not talking about an in landscape value, and of course access to this Farming is the primary economic mainstay in unfettered capitalism that will abandon a locale landscape. Many species of plant and animal the region. The imminent reconfiguration of The repair shops for electrical equipment, bicycles, because they can make t-shirts for two pennies a have evolved to become dependent on a degree EU agricultural subsidies in 2013 means that tractors, and the businesses that supported thousand elsewhere. We’re talking about people of human impact through agriculture for their the maintenance of ‘farming landscape’, or these trades have closed. The craft skills used who believe in a place; its history, its present and survival; once agriculture stops these species are sustainable heritage farming will become an by men like Paddy Cahir from Rinnamona, who future. The farmers, the teachers, the business threatened. option for farmers in North Clare in coming built a fine stone cowshed with his brother Sean people, even the artists. We need a people who years. This policy reconfiguration represents a are being lost. Paddy made carts, wired houses, will hang in there for as long as they can in the This project allows Abridged to continue its paradigmatic shift from conceptualising rural plastered walls, cut stone and built walls. His face of economic ruin as well as governmental stated policy of innovative visual art/magazine environments as sites for raw food and energy father John Cahir was a wheelwright and an folly and negligence. Otherwise it will be all collaborations, producing work that is artistically production to recognising the ‘design value’ of artist, in Barrie Cooke’s Map of Kilnaboy 1954 – about scenery and statues. Nothing else. excellent and socially relevant. Abridged 0 – 20: rural areas as arenas for cultural production. In 1984, he is named along with others in the area. Abandoned Clare examines the nature of change. North Clare, although family farming is still the Now all the businesses in Kilnaboy are gone; the Following on from our successful Abandoned It stands as a reflection of the times and as a main means of generating income at present, it tailor, the blacksmith, the three shops, the last of Donegal project Abridged is collaborating warning to the future. is now increasingly combined with off-farm work. which, Mary Shop’s, closed in the 1990s. Cooke’s with Co Clare based artist, Deirdre O’Mahony, The generation of farmers for whom ‘traditional’ Kilnaboy home where he lived when he first on Abridged 0 - 20: Abandoned Clare. Whereas smallholding was a way of life will soon be arrived in Ireland, stands empty and derelict. Abandoned Donegal focused on, in the main, urban retiring. Making visible the scale and nature commercial property, the Clare project sees the of rural farm closures Abandoned Clare draws The march of globalisation is evident in the focus shift to contemporary rural abandonment attention to the mute traces of specific, local multi-national supermarkets opening in out-of- as economic and social factors that have forced Gregory McCartney farming knowledge that are vanishing, along town shopping centres in medium size towns the abandonment of the rural in favour of the Abridged with their potential value to future generations. like Ennis and Kilrush. Grocery shops, creameries, ndit ndit co ions co ions nd a nd a a p a p s p s p l l i i m e m e r r d d e e t t t t e e d d r r e e m m i i l l s s p p p p a a a a n n d d s s n n c c o o i i o o t t n n i i d ad a 4 5 0 - 20 0 - 20 pubs, butchers and post offices are gradually entirely dependent on oil? Lippard makes a case closing in places like Mullagh and Ballyea. for ‘emotional retrospection’, balanced by local Cinemas are dark in Scarriff and Kilrush, and in knowledge and critical curiosity. This quality is Ennis traders are finding it hard to compete with best understood in the words of cultural theorist internet shopping. Ennistymon’s famous shop and Homi Bhabha quoted by Lippard in her book The pub fronts are full of estate agent signs and an Lure of the Local. ‘Remembering is never a quiet iconic landmark like Blake’s corner in Ennistymon act of introspection. It is a painful re-membering, is presently a contested planning issue as it is a putting together of the dismembered past to scheduled for demolition or relocation to make make sense of the trauma of the present.’ room for a new access route to Lahinch. When Abandoned Clare was first proposed in 2009 The intention with Abandoned Clare is not to rural Clare looked very different. The frenzied lament a lost utopian past but to stimulate, building developments, housing schemes provoke and provide evidence of other ways of and hotels, seemed to signify an obsession doing things. When reviewing the relationship with shedding any reminder of the economic between radicalism and nostalgia Lucy Lippard stagnation in the past. Now that the boom is reminds us that ‘utopia, too is a necessary and over, the ‘Abandoned’ project, with its focus on authentic goal, the object of a longing that may the signs of rural abandonment could be read as never be fulfilled but functions positively and a melancholic coda to the all-pervading litany authentically for just that reason.’ By making of economic disaster.