The Politics of the Everyday (2010)
Inkjet prints/ 18.5cm x 13.5cm/ 150gr paper/ edition of 5.

These photographic prints are copies of pages taken from a distinctive library of books from inside the HM Maze prison. In the aftermath of the 1981 Hunger Strike republican prisoners set up its own education structure and used the £2 a week they got from the prison authorities to buy tobacco and set up a book fund. Books came from friends, relatives and bookstores in Ireland, England and the USA. The books stand for a replacement of the republican prisoners’ struggle with an educational process and 4-5% took up Open University study. There are estimated to be 16,000 books on politics and revolution, history, literature, language, and sociology. The photographed extracts focus on the certain pages and parts, as the paper surfaces have been indented with personal annotations, comments or doodles and official stamps of subject approval.  These interventions offer an insight into this prison culture and follow in a tradition of prison writing and emancipation of the oppressed through education.

I Is Someone Else (2010)
Inkjet prints/ 21.5cm x 21cm/ 300gr paper/ edition of 5.

I love Rimbaud. Like many devotees I went on a trip to his hometown, Charleville, and walked along the Mars river where he and fellow poet, Paul Verlaine went on extended walks. Following in his footsteps is a ramble looking for an encounter with what made him so enigmatic. The landscape of this Ardennes area feels abandoned, the only cultural icons are black pigs and Rimbaud, whose face is embellishes tea towels, t-shirts and just about anything. Little else seems to happen in the post-industrial landscape of the river. Locals drink cans of beer in the afternoon while fishing beside the wild-forested hills stretching along the bankside. The dense woods of unusually short trees proffer some clues on Rimbaud as the blanket of nature has no paths or access, shrouding wild boar and other beasts. Rimbaud’s imagination was fuelled by this space. He harnessed his proximity to nature as a potent force against bourgeois pretentiousness of 19th century France. He sought adventure and to disrupt and shock in order to reconfigure the reality. Like an unhinged Zen master he constantly antagonised the status quo and his visceral intensity knew no bounds as he paid the price of this excess.
The photos made in this project are intuitive responses to the everyday of this area and montage places with fragments to instil a sense of the extreme realism of Rimbaud’s life and poetry. The bringing together of elements strives to offer insight on the legend of the poet. The images are a form of eulogy to him, conveying something of his maverick spirit and the surreal atmosphere of Rimbaud’s background. In this work I switch roles between fan, author and protagonist to probe the myth and estrange the mundane.