Peatlands
Curated by ruairí ó cuív & kevin o’dwyer
When Joseph Beuys, one of the most important conceptual
artists of the 20th century visited Ireland in 1974 for his
lecture tour, he brought bales of peat briquettes to each
location.  Here he created his ‘Irish Energy’ sandwiches – a
pound of butter sandwiched between two briquettes - and in
one simple gesture he created a work that is both typical of
his art-making but also symbolic of his response to Ireland.   intended to offer a glimpse at the artistic and creative
Peat (or turf as it has been colloquially called in Ireland)
has always had strong evocations in Ireland, providing the
main source of fuel for centuries in times when we had little
else as a source of heat or energy and when both blanket and
raised bogs formed much of our landscape.  And so, it is not
surprising that artists have found the peatlands a source of
inspiration and therefore important that an exhibition be an
integral part of the International Peat Congress 2008.  The
exhibition is intentionally eclectic, reflecting the diversity of
responses to the subject. Be it figurative or abstract, painting
or three dimensional, film or photography, Peatlands is
interpretation of a major aspect of our landscape.
We would like to thank everyone who assisted us during the
research and development of this exhibition. Most of all, we
wish to thank the artists for such inspiring work. 
 Estranged Lands / The art of the peatlands
Dr.Ian Russell
NEH Keough Fellow,
Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies,
University of Notre Dame, USA
Dark Pool Seán McSweeney
This year marks the final season for turf cutting for 32
raised bogs that have been designated Special Areas of
Conservation (SAC) under the 1999 EU Habitats Directive.
The meeting out of this designation does signal a change
in lifestyle and livelihood for those who, for generations,
have relied on the peatlands for fuel and as an economic
resource. It also represents, however, a much broader
change in our ecological awareness in Ireland and the
significance of our resources, which transcend local and
national politics. These changes present us with an urgent
question of what will be the future of such landscapes, and
in this light, it is fortunate that this summer Ireland hosts
the International Peat Congress.
The 2008 International Peat Congress theme is ‘After Wise
Use – The Future of the Peatlands’. Hosted in Tullamore,
Co. Offaly, the Congress is giving participants from
around the globe the chance to reflect on the history of
the development of peatlands and offer pause to consider
what will be the future of these landscapes. These are
landscapes as rich with tradition and heritage as they
are with ecological significance and bio-diversity. In the
preface to their seminal history The Bogs of Ireland, John
Feehan and Grace O’Donovan called us to remember:
…the growing bog has kept a meticulous record of our
doings down the centuries. Its successive layers are the
leaves of a book in which hieroglyphic pollen and other
fossils document the changing Irish landscape…
The ecological memories of bogscapes are something
precious to be celebrated. As much was appreciated by the
 Gilmore, T. 2008 ‘Turf cutters vent anger at ban as final
season on protected bogs begins’, The Irish Times, 24
March.
 Feehan, J. & G. O’Donovan 1996 The Bogs of Ireland, Walsh
Printers, Tipperary. p. xi.
ecological and political artwork of Joseph Beuys. As Beuys
stated:
Bogs are the liveliest elements in the European
landscape, not just from the point of view of flora,
fauna, birds and animals, but as storing places of life,
mystery and chemical change, preservers of ancient
history. They are essential to the whole eco-system for
water regulation, humidity, ground water and climate
in general.
In 1971, this sensibility led Beuys to his performance
artwork Eine Aktion im Moor (Bog Action), where he
directly physicalised the rich diversity of the bogscape by
enveloping himself in its fabrics. The legacy of Beuys’
work presents us not so much with a history or past of art
in bog landscapes but a call to engage with and embrace
the possible futures of such spaces.
The future of the peatlands is a matter for some
consideration, and in addressing the possibilities; this
summer’s International Peat Congress offers inspiration
through a programme of artwork from an international
group of contemporary artists. Brought together by Kevin
O’Dwyer and Ruairí Ó’Cuív, the artists have responded
to the life, landscape and materials of the bogs in ways
as diverse in content as they are in media. Sculptures
and installations will be offered by Ann Mulrooney,
Caroline Madden, Jørn Rønnau and Alan Counihan. There
will also be paintings from Seán McSweeney and Jock
Nichol, enamel panels by Joan MacKarrell, peat panels by
Martina Galvin, photographs by James Fraher and a new
 Joseph Beuys as quoted in Tisdale, C. 1979 Joseph Beuys,
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, p.39.
 Adams, D. 1992 ‘Joseph Beuys: Pioneer of a Radical
Ecology’, Art Journal, vol. 51, No. 2, Art and Ecology
(Summer), pp. 26-34.
video work by Grace Weir. Each in their different way,
the artists through their stories and work offer possible
paths and ways of engaging peatlands as places which
are not dying or decaying but are steeped in opportunities
for self discovery and the creation and celebration of the
traditional lifeways closer in time with the rhythms of our
world.
Alan Counihan’s photography and sculpture explore peat
and bogland as the liminal stage between stone and wood
– between the bone core and fleshy organic life which
inhabits the surface. The bog for Alan is the pause between
the decay of organic life and the resulting production of a
solidified core of rock in the life cycle of the earth. ‘
If stone is like bone, peat is like flesh, soft, amorphous
and semi- liquid. I am only learning its physical secrets,
the way it draws in on itself drying and shriveling over
time as though in shocked reaction to its modeling.
In its drying and shriveling over time, peat for Alan is a
container both of decaying matter but also of waning
memory. Within this container, startling evidence of the
memories of bogs have been found. Excavations under
Séamus Caulfield near Ballycastle, Co. Mayo, revealed one
of the oldest field systems in the world, over five millennia
old. Preserved by a blanket of peat, the Céide Fields of
north Mayo are one of the many strange wonders revealed
to us through engagement with peatlands.
Counihan’s first visual memory of the bogs was a
photograph by John Hinde of a redheaded boy and his
sister beside a creel-burdened donkey.
I would have been that boy’s age when I had my first
summer walks out on Wicklow’s Calgary Bog and even
 Caulfield, S. 1986 ‘Environment Guide to the Bogs and
Our Past beneath Them’, The Resource Source, no. 5, 1-4, 1.
then that landscape seemed otherworldly; alluring in
the dry blaze of summer colour but dreadful and omi-
nously barren in winter’s depth.
Counihan deepened his connection with boglands when
he undertook a residency at the Heinrich Böll cottage on
Achill Island, Co. Mayo. Developing work from those
intimate encounters he had on daily walks through the
boglands, he began to produce work which testified to
the rich social memories of such lands. Here, the dead
provided nourishment for the living landscape. As organic
life waned, the bogs waxed, and amidst this cycle, a
residual memory made camp and occasionally is revealed
to us today. At Lough Boora, Co. Offaly, for example,
excavations in 1977 under Michael Ryan discovered one
of the earliest Mesolithic archaeological sites in Ireland,
preserved through the progressively rising levels of bog.
This site gifted to us by the bog helped alter the story of
humans in Ireland, enriching our knowledge of some of
the earliest people in Ireland.
The bogs do have strange powers over the materials of our
imaginations. Journalist and archaeologist, Christine Finn
noted this in a recent and powerful study of the impact
of the photographs of Lennart Larsen and the research
of Peter Globb on the Danish bog bodies found in the
1960s. Ireland has had its share of bog body finds, with
events of discovery well recorded from over the last 150
years. Notably, in 2003, two Iron Age bodies were found
in Oldcroghan, Co. Offaly and Clonycavan, Co. Meath,
prompting a major study and exhibition of bog bodies
in Ireland, which are currently on display at the National
Museum, Kildare Street.
While the bogs are home to many stories, artefacts and
 Finn, C. 2006 ‘Bog Bodies and Bog Lands: Trophies
of art, science and the imagination’ in I. Russell (ed.)
Images, Representations and Heritage: Moving beyond modern
approaches to archaeology. Springer, New York, pp. 315-32.
social memories, they are also home to more intimate life and death, both indigenous and manmade. The
encounters. Raised in Leitrim, some of Maddens’ earliest natural growth cycles of woodbine or heather (often
memories are of crossing the bog as a shortcut to do family collected and neatly bundled together with string for
errands. sweeping around the hearth or top of the cooking
stove); the turf season of carefully stacked footings for
Another early memory is helping my grandfather to
drying out the peat before being reconfigured into a
load turf into big square creels constructed from sally
pike or transported to a shed for domestic use; rusted-
rods and to then transfer the turf into the back of an
out abandoned old cars, tin cans and the skulls and
ass cart that would later be stubbornly pulled up the
remains from a cow, dog or cat; water holes and drains
hill home to the turf shed by Tommy the donkey who
teeming with tadpoles and later frogs; pheasants and
took off for a mille on his own with my granddad
foxes.
chasing after him to stop.
In the works programmed here, she brings together the
Her artwork testifies to such rich stories of the worked
archaeological resonances of bogwood with the more con-
land, manifested through the intense working of materials
temporary senses of glass. Embedded in her sculptures
in her art. Madden’s work presents us with sympathetic
are engaging contradictions. Where we may feel glass is
juxtappositions of transient organic matter and more
a more permanent substance, it is an extermely viscous
permanent materials such as glass. Her sculptural works
liquid that itself flows and degrades over time. So, like the
capture the familiarity we have today of such permanent
bog lands, the glass components of Madden’s works are
industrial materials but counters the estranged relationship
nearly imperceptibly durational in their viewing. Situat-
between them and the material cycles of the organic world
ing her work within the peatlands, the durational qualities
which surround them.
are emphasised by the flux, change and cycles of the earth
The visual landscape is always filled with elements of which is evident in the vast horizons of bogscapes.
These temporal sensitivities form the point of depature
of the paintings of Seán McSweeney. His dark canvases at
first viewing present a barren and timeless landscape, but
as you are drawn into the vigorous strokes of his brush, you
find flashes of colour and life - sprigs of brown, sprouts of
green and dashes of red which declare the temporal speci-
ficity of his works. They declare intimate moments in his
life amongst bogs, punctuated by his sightings of traces of
growth from amongst the brown and black peatand. For
the last 25 years, the cutaway bogs of North Sligo near Bal-
lyconnell have been McSweeney’s most immediate inspi-
ration. Thinking of his homes environs, he recalls encoun-
ters with traces of the workings of the cutaway bogs:
I remember seeing the local men dig out the turf from
Kelly’s bog. These bog holes 6-8 foot deep are now a
mass of vegetation. During the growing season you
see the marsh marigold, the bog bean, bog iris, bog
cotton, the ragged robin, lots of orchids. The pools are
home for wild life, the swans, wild duck, water hens,
the grey heron. The pools are home for eels and a
playground for the otter.
In McSweeney’s works, the absences and negative spaces
rendered through peat extraction are subtly inhabited.
These static spaces become the home of a cacophony of
burgeoning development in the ecology of the bogland.
Yet despite the promise of such vibrancy and activity in
his paintings, the images convey a sense of stillness or
perhaps of balance or harmony. McSweeney’s art invites
a sensitivity to this harmony of life, action, growth, death
and decay – a gentle call for a more subtle appreciation of
the ecological nuances of peatlands.
From peatlands to peat in itself, Ann Mulrooney’s work
speaks of possibilities in the rich metaphoric engagement
with peat as material. Living in London away from her home
in rural Ireland, Mulrooney was brought to peat through
the poetry of Paddy Kavanagh and Seamus Heaney. Her
draw towards peat was something of a Yeatsian call from
the rigid forms of urbanism to the organic possibilities
of peat as her own Innisfree. The skill in manipulating
and conjuring forms from peat for Mulrooney is its own
reward, perhaps capturing something of the satisfaction
of the traditional hand moulding of mud turf common to
Ulster. Her shaping of peat into the Baroque metalwork
designs common to streetscapes in London call forth the
life history of peat as a resource which fueled the city, while
the ornate quality of the metalwork reminds one of the
presence of metal barriers and structures which designate
the ownership of urban spaces. Indeed, such politicized
ownership of common space is something equally potent
in the history of the peatlands themselves.
While Mulrooney’s work speaks to us of a distance from
and a reconnection to intimate landscapes through the
touch of peat, James Fraher’s photographs approach
us from another place. Growing up in Illinois, Fraher’s
first encounters with bogscapes were from the Northern
parts of his state. The Volo Bog and a bog south-east of
the town of Wauconda instilled in him a fascination with
the energies of such places of decay, which produced such
diverse life. In 1977, Fraher visited his ancestral homeland
in Ireland. ‘Nothing prepared me for the sight of the vast
peat bogs of Ireland, nor … the scent of a peat fire burning
in every home in the West of Ireland…’, Fraher recalls.
Learning to cut turf by hand from my wife’s uncle
Anthony and his sons Thomas and Michael was an
unforgettable experience. As was visiting the local
blacksmith Jimmy Dowd who I watched forge the blade
of my turf spade. … It was backbreaking but satisfying
work. My cutting turf was an anchoring and grounding
connection to the bog and landscape of the country.
Fraher’s photographs speak of this connectedness of
work to earth and the permeable boundaries between
conceptions of hands, tools and land known well to
workers on the peatlands. His photos, which are at once
both specific and anonymous, celebrate a modest heroism
of daily manual labour. Fraher’s work can remind us of
the lives of manual turf cutters and the skill and talent of
traditional turf cutting techniques. For example, heroic
lore grew up around Christopher Daly from Kerry who was
reported in July 1945 in An Slán, the Turf Development
Board’s journal, as setting the national record for manual
turf cutting; he cut 598.5 cubic metres in 48 hours. The
heroic tale of Daly highlights the significance of the life
of a turf cutter in Ireland as something understood and
experienced by many living in Ireland. The life of the
turf cutter was no less iconic or ubiquitous than that of
the farmer, for they both worked and harvested the land.
Instead of fixating on the green fields of Éire, the life of
the turf cutter was, however, defined by the colours of the
white turf, brown turf and black fen peat.
Connectedness to peatland does not only resonate through
the black earth. Some, like the artist Joe Hogan, are drawn
to the fruits of the land, such as willow and bogwood.
 Trodd, V. 1996 ‘The Greatest Turf-cutter was a Kerry-
man’, Kerry’s Eye.
Hogan’s baskets are not so much a result of his interest in
basketweaving but of his attraction to willow as a material.
For Hogan, willow as a material which is worked from its
growth through to its harvesting and weaving is deeply
satisfying. Living in northwest Connemara and south Mayo,
he draws an inspiration from the land around him and the
rich and deep shades of colour in the moorland grasses.
Hogan’s more recent work stems from a desire to forge a
deeper connection with the natural world around him. His
baskets draw on found objects of bogwood from the bog
lands near his home. For him, they are an on-going process
of learning where no single work is finished or completed
but merely an intimate moment in the growth of weaved
tangles of a life amongst reeds and willow and peat and
water which he encounters daily.
The mediation of traces and residues of such intimate
entanglements within the bogs resonates through the work
of Martina Galvin. Since her first experience of bogland at
Clara Bog in Co. Offaly in 1996, Galvin has returned again
and again to the rich, fruitful peatlands collecting discrete
finds of seeds and dried flowers, which she works into the
texture of her paintings. Galvin’s paintings are palimpsests
in themselves, manifesting a new palimpsest. Working and
reworking her mixtures of turf and oil paint, she creates her
own layers of agency and memory, sometimes 10 layers deep.
For Galvin, the bogs are a place which speaks to both the
macro and micro qualities of life. She remembers intimate
views of delicate flowers and petals at her feet, which merge
seamlessly into a wide horizon and sky – an ecology which
we all share. When installed, her bog panels offer us a
constellation of her intimate viewings of boglands. Each
individual panel evoking an almost sublime placement
within the greater whole of the work.
As a counterpoint to the manifestation of layers in Galvin’s
works, Joan MacKarell’s wall panels offer an interrogation
of the surface of palimpsest. Her wall panels are a testament
to the rugged surface of the peatlands – a surface, cracked
pierced and ruptured by the many layers of history and heritage
which the artist senses in these places. For MacKarell, ‘the
bogland can be read like pages of a book, with the surface
portraying the final page’, and she actively responds the
many finds and memory-caches enveloped by the rising
peatlands over hundreds and thousands of years. It is apt that
only two years ago, work in the bogs produced a book whose
many pages were as saturated with historical significance as
with bog water. In July 2006, an early Medieval Psalter was
found during peat excavation in the townsland of Fadden
near Birr, Co. Offaly. Dating to roughly 800 AD, the Psalter’s
vellum pages not only offered significant opportunities
to understand early Christianity in Ireland but also a rich
metaphor for our engagement with peatlands. Just as the
pages of the palimpsest were worked and reworked creating
new stories as well as leaving traces of earlier narratives, so
too our lived entanglements with boglands render the land a
palimpsest of human agency. This palimpsest is the surface
which MacKarell’s work celebrates. Not only a landscape
resonant with social histories, the MacKarell’s work speaks
from places where her personal histories reside. Stories of
a North Donegal blanket bog traversed by ‘a donkey and
cart stuffed with old coats, wellingtons, a blackened kettle,
sandwiches, a milk bottle and of course several slanes to use
for turf cutting’ enliven the ecological sympathies which her
work call for in negotiating peatlands.
The themes of Jock Nichol’s paintings echo residual
traces within the ecologies of the peatlands. Drawn to the
enmeshment of intimate human, as well as industrial,
agency in such landscapes, Nichol’s paintings respond to
 Mac Cormaic, R. 2006 ‘Discovery in midlands bog “of
staggering importance”’, The Irish Times, 26 July.
 Bergin, D. 2006 ‘Scholars did not expect to find calibre of
Offaly bog psalter’, The Irish Times, 6 September.

the oblique and sublime qualities of a vast bogscape.
Visually it is stunning - rich in colour and texture, the man
made geometry of drains and plantations, all set against a
vast horizon and the ever changing sky worthy of the grand
landscape tradition.
Raised beneath the Cheviot Hills of the Scottish borders, Nichol
has always found purpose to life through the rich contrast of
bogs as a locus of death in which there is such a colourful
texture of life. Heather, mosses and grasses as well as stagnant
pools of water form a diverse fabric of interwoven threads of life
thriving off the gifts of decaying forms.
Being on the bog is a sensual feast of colour, sounds, shape,
texture, smells - from the wide horizon, to the minutae at
our feet. Untouched ancient bog sits beside a healing post-
industrial landscape, sharing marsh grasses and solitude
under a big sky. A place both timeless and vulnerable.
Nichol’s paintings present a view of timeless horizon, a view
which in itself is vulnerable beneath the weight of progress and
industrial development. His intimate paintings offer a personal
moment of reflection upon memories of peatlands amidst the
rush of time.
Embracing this flow of time, Jørn Rønnau’s contribution
to the Peatlands programme is a poetic working of Durrow
Abbey beechwood. The sculpture ‘Traveller’ carries multiple
meanings, manifested in its single form. At a glance it may seem
to be a tree trunk, with its weight of wood perhaps declaring the
possibility of roots below. With closer examination, however,
the handle at its top suggests portability, allowing its notional
roots to be packed and brought with the piece as it travels itself.
As a complete form, the work is reminiscent of a bell shrine.
Instead of housing a sacred bell though, this piece houses
the sound of meditation in the ‘OM’ carved into its bottom
side. The piece presents a series of carved texts on its surface
which, following the mantra of ‘OM’, offer meditations on
the mediation of forms. One side carries, however, a list of the
towns the work has visited, leaving a space for the addition of
new names. This unfinished list renders visible the unfinished
process of becoming an artwork and reminds us of the continual
flow of possibilities of such materials as unending moments
of process. ‘Traveller’ offers a proposition of the unfinished
manifestation of the peatlands and the unending process of
discovery the represent.
Where many of the artists programmed offer pauses and
moments, Grace Weir’s responses to peatlands offer durational
movements. An accomplished video artist, Weir’s video
productions document movements through spaces and
scapes while simultaneously conjuring new possibilities for
movements through the videos’ installations. Weir has been
recently interested in the scientific process of transecting
landscapes in order to document life (e.g. butterfly populations).
As a rigourous mode of producing scientific data, Weir’s walks
through bog landscapes transect both the land itself as well as
our collective expectations of viewing and understanding such
landscapes. Perhaps it is the durational qualities of video which
afford Weir’s responses to land and space such resonance
with the temporal significance of bog space. Though her video
work is often site specific, her engagements with the peatlands
conjure something of a grander intimacy with the palimpsestic
qualities of the narrative of bogscape.
The oft-quoted poem Bogland by Seamus Heaney concludes
with this very sentiment:
Our pioneers keep striking
Inwards and downwards,
Every layer they strip
Seems camped on before.
The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.
The wet centre is bottomless.10
10 Heaney, S. 1969 North, Faber, London, 56.
Working boglands here can be an unending process of discovery
of self and community and the creation of shared pasts and
futures from the materials of these excavations. The harvesting
of bogs not only would harvest fuel for fires but also fuel for
imaginations. The palimpsestic surfaces of bogland offered
evidence of diverse human creative acts throughout time. With
the ending of turf cutting on 32 raised bogs this year, it does
pose the question of what will be the future of such pregnant
landscapes.
The selected artists present us with propositions for the future
of our peatlands. They propose possibilities of new ways of
being with landscapes founded on the long developed traditions
of living and working with the land. Though peatlands grow
through the decomposition of matter, in the midst of this
decay there is a rich opportunity for discovering new and old,
different and traditional creative possibilities. Preserving and
conserving our peat resources is not only about protecting
the landscape, but it is also about preserving the tradition of
human participation in the landscape through informed and
responsible creative acts. By preserving the peatlands, we
preserve a diversity in our ways of life on earth. This is a legacy
worth passing on – our peatlands as a place for shared discovery
of our pasts and futures.
References
Adams, D. 1992 ‘Joseph Beuys: Pioneer of a Radical Ecology’,
Art Journal, vol. 51, No. 2, Art and Ecology (Summer), pp. 26-
34.
Bergin, D. 2006 ‘Scholars did not expect to find calibre of
Offaly bog Psalter’, The Irish Times, 6 September.
Caulfield, S. 1986 ‘Environment Guide to the Bogs and Our
Past beneath Them’, The Resource Source, no. 5, 1-4, 1.
Feehan, J. & G. O’Donovan 1996 The Bogs of Ireland, Walsh
Printers, Tipperary. p.xi.
Finn, C. 2006 ‘Bog Bodies and Bog Lands: Trophies of art,
science and the imagination’ in I. Russell (ed.) Images,
Representations and Heritage: Moving beyond modern
approaches to archaeology. Springer, New York, pp. 315-32.
Gilmore, T. 2008 ‘Turf cutters vent anger at ban as final season
on protected bogs begins’, The Irish Times, 24 March.
Heaney, S. 1969 North, Faber, London, 56.
Mac Cormaic, R. 2006 ‘Discovery in midlands bog “of
staggering importance”’, The Irish Times, 26 July.
Tisdale, C. 1979 Joseph Beuys, The Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, p.39.
Trodd, V. 1996 ‘The Greatest Turf-cutter was a Kerryman’,
Kerry’s Eye.
artists
peatlands / Alan Counihan
alan counihan
broken vessel
Achill Island 1998,
Lightjet digital photographic print
Most natural materials embody
and reveal their specific histo-
ries, the stories of their growth
are fixed in their grain. This
is especially true of stone and
wood. However, between these
two realms, between the planet’s
bone and epidermis there is an
intermediate realm that is nei-
ther one nor the other, the epi-
dermal layer of soil. Apart from
the oceans this is the realm from
which all animate life rises and
into which it decays, the realm of
clays and peat.
During twenty years work as a
sculptor I have engaged almost
exclusively with stone, exploring
the violent energy of granites
and the settled quietude of
limestones. It is its embodiment
of geological time that makes
stone so attractive as a sculptural
medium allowing as it does the
intertwining of two processes
in creative engagement; the one
which formed and forms its
being in concert with that which
seeks to shape it toward some
personal interpretive essence
and physical renewal.
It is however, a most resistant
material demanding aggressive
if not violent engagement in its
extraction and shaping.
Perhaps it was to escape from
the noise of quarries and the
machinery associated with
my work that I first began to
explore bogland as a source
of inspiration. Fascinated by
its dark nature I responded
with the creation of a series
of photographs documenting
ephemeral works within its
landscape. More recently I have
been exploring the possibilities
of peat itself as a medium and
am fascinated by the associated
challenges. If stone is like
bone, peat is like flesh, soft,
amorphous and semi- liquid.
I am only learning its physical
secrets, the way it draws in on
itself drying and shrivelling
over time as though in shocked
reaction to its modelling.
The series of works with which
I am presently engaged are an
exploration of peat and bogland
as container not only of the
decaying tissue of ancient fields
and forests but of tribal memory
which, sadly, many of us seem so
eager to forget.
peatlands / James Fraher
james fraher
thomas and turf sods
Culleens, County Sligo, 1999
In 1977, I arrived in Ireland
for a one-year sabbatical. The
one-year stay turned into two
years, living near Culleens,
County Sligo with the Atlantic
Ocean on one side of us and
the Ox Mountains on the other.
I photographed, listened to
neighbors and relatives telling
stories, played music with
traditional musicians, traveled,
absorbed the culture of my
ancestors, and even cut two
trailer loads of turf one spring
on the bog.
In 1991, as one of eighty-two
photographers working for a
book project called A Day in the
Life of Ireland, I found myself
again on the bog. It was May,
and I returned to the area where
many of our neighbors were
still cutting turf by hand. After
making portraits of some of my
turf-cutting friends, I was drawn
to photograph T.P. Burke’s
strong hands wrapped around
his turf spade. A number of years
later I photographed our cousin,
Thomas, with an arm load of
turf. These are two very simple
photographs, but images which
contain cultural memories for
all to see and feel. I don’t always
know at the time when making
a photograph what leads me to
do so, just an intuition from the
heart to be creative and respond
to a situation and a feeling. I do
this with a passion and a respect
for tradition in a place that I
again call home.
peatlands / Martina Galvin
martina galvin
no 1.bog landscape-skin of earth
10 x 30 ft (300 panels 1ft.x1ft)
Peat, oil-paint and varnish on acrylic panel
This tactile, organic and richly
coloured “Bog Landscape-Skin
of Earth” owes its inspiration
to the bogs of Ireland. The
rich darkness of the peat, the
multitude of unsepected colours
of the vegetation that flourishes
in the bogs, the constantly
changing light of the skies. This
unique living landscape. is a
consistent source of richness
for me.
In the work itself, the individual
panels are arranged in rows
and grids, resembling stellar
constellations, gaseous clouds
and magnified microbiological
material all at once. The change
of scale from individual panel,
that are like individual paintings,
to the finished, installed
expanse of the work creates the
alternate terrains of the micro
and macrocosmic worlds that
one experiences in the bog. You
look closely at the details on the
ground, the plants, the moss,
the flowers, the bog cotton, the
peat itself and then you look up,
and out, at the expanse of the
bog surface and the boundless
sky above. It is this magic of the
bog that I celebrate in the work.
peatlands / Joe Hogan

joe hogan
basket
Deirks willow and bog pine
125x73x 59cm

I was drawn to basketmaking to spend time in my workshop.

because I wanted to grow my
own willow (the raw material
for baskets) and I sensed that
this involvement from growing
through to making would
prove deeply satisfying. This
has indeed proved to be the
case and over the last 30 years
of basketmaking, growing my
own rods and sourcing several
varieties with different qualities
has profoundly influenced the
way that I work. The opportunity
to live rurally and develop a real
understanding for a particular
place is also very important
to me. The area of north west
Connemara and south Mayo
where I live is very beautiful.
There are mountains, lakes and
large areas of blanket bog to
delight the eye and nourish the
soul and although we do not
have many trees the deepening
shades of reds and yellow in the
moorland grasses bring their
own visual delight.
I aim to make work to my own
standards since this is what is
fulfilling and keeps me wanting
I take some time each year to
try new ideas and to make new
designs but I also value repetition
and the fluency it develops.
Living in this spectacular
location for 30 years has taught
me that there is always more to
learn about a place and the same
is true of a basket tradition and
even of a particular basket.
For the past 10 years or so I have
become increasingly interested
in making non-functional
baskets, many of which involve
the use of finds of bog wood
from a wonderful area of wild
isolated bog land about 5 miles
from where I live. This work is
prompted by a desire to develop
a deeper connection to the
natural world. Even though
I am currently working on
non-functional baskets which
would be considered innovative
I think there is a danger of
under-valuing the importance of
fluency and good technique and
for this reason I return to themes
again and again to improve on
past work.
peatlands / Maurice MacGonigal

maurice macgonigal
bog cuttings - the trench
Clonsast, April 1949
Oil

Maurice MacGonigal is one context and work of semi-state

of Ireland’s noted landscape companies. This painting from
painters of the twentieth 1949 depicts the vastness of the
century. He is associated turf harvesting operations in
with landscapes of the west Clonsast. As well as being very
of Ireland, particularly of fine artworks in themselves they
Connemara, Achill and the Aran are important for their historical
Islands. Bog Cuttings- the trench context.
was one of a series of paintings
commissioned by Todd Maurice MacGonigal PPRHA
Andrews, who at the time was (1900-1979)
Managing Director of Bord na
Móna. The commissions follow
the tradition of the ESB (who
commissioned Seán Keating
to record the construction of
the Shannon Hydro-Electric
Scheme at Ard na Crusha) where
artists were asked to record the
peatlands / Joan MacKarell

joan mackarell
archives in the peat
Vitreous enamel,sand,gravel,copper foil on steel
25cms x 178cms

The work for the Peatlands
exhibition is called ‘Archives
in the Peat’ which refers to my
current exploration into the
theme of ‘Memory and Place’.
Through research, I am revisiting peat. For me the bogland can
my culture and history and
the peatlands of Ireland are a
deep and valuable historical
repository.
Joseph Beuys was one of many
artists who worked with this
theme. He loved the idealists of
the past and this was rooted in
his passion for Celtic culture and
tradition. When Beuys visited
Ireland he responded to the land-
scape and valued the peatlands
as some of the last ecological
havens in Europe. For him these
were pervaded with a sense of
antiquity and primeval ness.
His Irish work reminded me of
my early childhood memories
of cutting turf from the bog
on a summer’s day and the
magical notion of finding buried
treasures within the layers. Over
the centuries remains of animal
bones, manmade structures,
metal artefacts and some
human bodies have been found
trapped between the layers of
compressed plants. These have
been well preserved because of
the chemical composition of the
be read like pages of a book,
with the surface portraying
the final page. In the panels,
by combining materials such
as sand, terracotta, and metal
foils with glass, I have tried to
capture the colours, textures,
and mystery of this landscape.
The fractured surface of cracks
and crevices reflect a buried past.
My message is that the panels
should celebrate a unique and
rare landscape that has almost
vanished.
For centuries much of the Irish
bogland has been decimated
from over exploitation for fuel
which has had a detrimental
ecological effect on the area.
The management strategies
for peat lands should aim for
a combination of uses both
sympathetic to the landscape and
compatible with the ecology of
the bogs.
peatlands / Caroline Madden

caroline madden
reflections of lough boora π
Blown, solid and cold glass form, slate
40cm long x 15cm diameter

Winding lanes, grass shooting up These fragmentary thoughts

either side of the wheel tracks that illustrate my vivid memories
travel the Peat lands. of the peatlands and fuel the
ideas behind this body of work.
Raised dishevelled banks, faces cut
Another aspect of this work
away, rectangular incisions running
is that the techniques used to
horizontally along the broad surface
create it are purposefully labour
bearing homage to the movement of
intensive and cannot be readily
the slane as each sod is removed.
replicated by a machine. Each
Below, cubist-reflecting ponds teem piece embodies ideas about
with shimmering tadpoles zigzagging indigenous plants and wildlife
as if riding fairground bumper cars. of Lough Boora while recording
Majestic swans glide softly along the dialogue between maker and
water-filled ditches with outstretched material in the realization of its
wings of the purist white; neck erect creation.
in regal stature.
Ever-changing weather commanding
a vast array of skylines; each
colourful formation transposing the
spirit of the landscape.
peatlands / Ann Mulrooney

ann mulrooney
hybrid drawing
cast peat moss, dog-rose wood
each pod approx. 55 x 10 x 6 cm, 2008

The shapes and patterns of its sensuality – the possibility

ornament have their origin in of uprising always remains
nature – what Vasari described – reminiscent of Bhaba’s
as ‘the beautiful fabric of the description of the colonised
world’. In a metaphysical subject, “ half-acquiescent,
rather than a material sense, half oppositional, always
ornament is created through untrustworthy”.
the subjugation of nature by
Ornament could be understood
form. Within that relationship,
as a means by which chaotic or
both forces are polarised into
wild forces are held in check
opposites and the resulting
through form and pattern; in my
ornament is a creation of the
work I try to redraw the balance
dynamic tension between
a little more in favour of Nature
the two. Order, repetition,
and the wild.
symmetry, dominate the natural
and bend it to their pattern.
Yet it never quite relinquishes
peatlands / Joch Nichol

joch nichol
colour before dark
Acrylic on Linen, 60 x 60 cm

Being on the bog is a sensual feast of colour,

sounds, shape, texture, smells - from the wide
horizon, to the minutae at our feet.
Untouched ancient bog sits beside a healing
post industrial landscape, sharing marsh
grasses and solitude under a big sky. A place
both timeless and vulnerable.
peatlands / Jorn Ronnau

jørn rønnau
traveller
The Durrow Abbey Beech
210 x 75 x 55 cm

This sculptural form called “Traveller” is made from one of

“traveller” exists somewhere
between a bell, a person, a
suitcase and a tree trunk. Adding
to its stable meditative character
the artist has given this sculpture
a subtle twist, the beginning of
a movement. Much like the Zen
Buddhist phrase of meditation:
The sound of one hand clapping.
It has a certain resemblance to
the Irish Sct. Patrick’s Bell.
This sculpture is about travelling,
be it spiritually, physically or
historically. Physically it refers to
human size. The head can also
be seen as a handle. The suitcase
reference thus indicates our
travel through life. Travelling as a
part of human identity. From the
spiritual travels of poetry readers
to the travelling of the sound of
a bell.
From the European scholars
who visited Durrow Abbey on
foot a thousand years ago to the
present visit by international
participants to the International
Peat Congress of 2008.
the pieces of the giant old beech
of Durrow Abbey, a historical site
of international importance in
the history of human culture. It is
located not far from Lough Boora
Parklands.
“Traveller” is one of 7 sculptures
created from this special beech,
forming the “Scriptorium”
project, celebrating the famous
“Book of Durrow”.
The texts:
Two sides of this sculpture carry
the names of the places visited
and potential places to visit.
There is also an open space for
further names.
The texts on the other two sides
are a Japanese Zen Buddhist
phrase of meditation and quotes
from poems by Norwegian
Gunvor Hofmo and Swedish
Tomas Tranströmer. The bottom
of the sculpture carries an Indian
sound word.
peatlands / Seán McSweeney
seán mcsweeney
early spring pool
oil on board, 28cm x 36cm
2001
Cutting turf in lots of areas
remains a thing of the past,
and although the actual work
has entered the psyche and is
even remembered as idyllic,
the bog itself, and any sign of
association with it, was seen by
some as a sign of uncouthness,
backwardness, of rustic foolery.
Finally a new insult entered the
language- The Bogman, meaning
someone to be avoided, a
country buff or bumpkin, an
uneducated type. Then Seán
McSweeney happened along.
After years of looking at the
mountains, he found the model-
the actual landscape- was no
longer standing up, but lying
down.
So when you look into his work,
you are not looking across at
something on the wall, you are
looking down, the place below
you, it is a turf with a myriad
of small life. The edges of the
pools have become his frames,
and what appears abstract in
the actual picture has in fact a
home in reality. These paintings
are mediations upon bog pools.
Whipped by the Atlantic in
winter, blossoming out of sight
in spring, they have provided
him with a constant source of
inspiration. He calls them his
wild garden. They are sacred to
him; it is where he makes his
first scratches to carry back to
his studio, and if he’s lost his
way it’s where he comes to find
it again.
The Bogman
Dermot Healy
April 2001
peatlands / Grace Weir

grace weir
transect
HDV transferred to DVD
2008

The film project takes as a start- Boora Parklands are man-made

ing point the method by which
butterfly data is recorded, where
detailed counts are made of all
butterfly species seen along a
fixed route, called a transect,
that is walked each week over a
period of time. This is consid-
ered as scientifically rigorous
data, that can be analysed to
detect declines or increases in
the populations of resident and
migrant butterflies from year to
year.
The film looks at the subjective
aspect of staking a path for the
gathering of information and
explores the alignment of an
actual experience of a place with
scientific facts about it. Lough
but resown with nature and
oscillate between a planned and
executed project and something
uncontrollable and wild.
A camera traces a route in the
parklands, observing grasses,
plantlife and fauna. This path is
retraced several times, in each
attempting to capture on film a
number of butterflies. Elusive
and difficult to pin down, the
film attempts to walk the line
between the point where facts
are gathered in a determined
exercise and where objectivity is
transcended despite a rational
approach and the subjective and
the sublime come into sight.
Sculpture in the Parklands
Lough Boora, Co. Offaly
The magnificent wetlands and wildlife wilderness of Lough Boora now host some of the most
innovative land and environmental sculptures in Ireland. The artists, inspired by the rich natural and
industrial legacy of the boglands, have created a series of large-scale sculptures that are now part of
the Parklands permanent collection. Sculpture in the Parklands began as an international sculpture
symposium in 2002 when seven Irish and international artist created works of art over a three week
residency. Eight site- specific sculptures were created during the symposium and they form the nucleus
of the project. The intervention of the symposium artists has added another layer of engagement for
visitors to the area, by combining visual and conceptual interpretations of the geography, landscape,
industrial history of peat harvesting and the people who had lived and worked there.

The success of the symposium led to the formation of Sculpture in the Parklands, a 50-acre sculpture
park, which continues to invite artists to create significant site- specific works of art during the artist
in residency programme each year. The mission of Sculpture in the Parklands is to inspire artists
to create artworks in response to the unique landscape and industrial heritage of the cut away
bogland and to build awareness of the arts within the community through public participation and
interaction. In addition to permanent sculpture and time-based work, the project has a commitment to
commissioning video artists, composers, writers, choreographers, and performance artists to interpret
and document this unique landscape, folklore and industrial history.

Sculpture in the Parklands has worked in partnership with Bord na Mona, Lough Boora Parklands
Group, Offaly County Council and the Arts Council in the development of this unique sculpture park.
Mike Bulfin /
Sky-train
Having grown up in the area, my abiding memory is of the machines
that Bord na Mona brought in to work the bogs: the ditchers, ridgers and
trains. Looking at a line of peat wagons, flat on the horizon, I decided to
take this image and commemorate it by translating it into a sculptural
context- using Bord na Mona trains and wagons in a different plane-
hence the introduction of the rainbow curve.
To emphasis the train going up into the sky, ditcher wheels were
introduced to form tunnels in the supporting mound so the light can be
seen through it. The engine is a “Rustin”. One of the oldest models and
the wagons are of the open creel type, reminiscent of the creels used to
carry turf on horse or donkey.
This piece is a celebration of Bord na Mona machines ant the men who
operated them.
Naomi Seki /
A Tree in a Sculpture
“ We finally learned to live and let live.
When will the tree grow taller than the sculpture?”
The sculpture compares the natural and manmade, organic and
geometrical- the breathing and quiet between a tree and a sculpture.
Made from Douglas Fir, the sculpture is 8 metres tall, 2.7 metres wide and
5.6metres deep.
Maurice MacDonagh /
Raised circle
Hundreds of miles of rails traverse Ireland’s bogs as narrow-gauge
locomotives go to and fro, pulling long trains of turf wagons to power
stations. Maurice MacDonagh’s Raised Circle, fabricated from this
narrow-gauge rail, floats one metre above the landscape. The rail is
painted “Bord na Mona yellow”, which is found on everything from
locomotives to turf harvesting machinery. This yellow circle floats above
the ever-changing plant-life of the cut away bog, often disappearing
during the summer season and re-appearing during autumn.
JØrn RØnnau /
Lough Boora Triangle
A space for meditation. A small triangular room with a very special
atmosphere.
Built around an iron frame, three black bog oak trunks will form the
corners. Shaped irregular pieces of bogwood will form the somewhat
transparent walls. The narrow entrance will be marked by a triangular
serpent stepping plate. Inside will be a yew seat where visitors will be
able to sit looking out of the narrow entrance toward the horizon.
Eileen MacDonagh /
Boora Pyramid
I have always wanted the opportunity to make a large work in the
landscape. The idea of a pyramid was one, which evolved during visits to
the site and discussions with Bord na Mona about the materials available
in the area.
Our work is a stepped pyramid, eight metres wide and 6 metres high. It
is made from unmortared glacial stone, which has been enshrouded in
the growing bogs until revealed once more during peat harvesting. The
pyramid is one of the most stable structures and has resonance with
previous times and cultures.
Assisted by Marc Wouthers (Belgium)
Dave Kinane /
Boora Convergence  Bog Wood Road
As other artists at Lough Boora have noticed the industrial bog is criss-
crossed by lines of machine cuts, drains and railways. While observing
this I was also drawn to the image of the Ferbane cooling towers, as I
remember them on the horizon. The towers ironically, while appearing to
be all curves, are in fact made of straight lines arranged in a circle.
Now I could use the steel and wood of the railway and arrange them in a
circle; I could build a stable, skeletal construction. I could reference the
industrial heritage of the cutaway bog in the choice of materials and by the
form they take. From the exterior the sculpture offered an open patterned
lattice and in the interior a view of the sky framed by a swirling upward
movement.
The lines of the piece can be imagined to converge at this place from
infinity. Organic wood and machine steel combine in it. Skill and creativity
connect between art and the artisans at the Boora workshops.
Johan Sietzema /
Walking around in this special landscape, I was thinking about the great
forest, that inhabited this landscape over 3000 years ago.
A harsh landscape, played by wind, rain, the elements, by nature.
The 6 or 8 meters peat, cutaway from where we are standing now, The
Iron Age road-way constructions across the peaty seas, the size and
power of the stone-blocks everywhere.
In direction of the growing green “bog” of leafs from the trees today, my
walk of several days, finding all these bogwood, thrown away like dirt and
left behind,
I arranged a procession of found black-oak trees coming out of the
ground, climbing up to the level of the landscape long ago, like a visual
and emotional way up, a bog track;
“ Bog – Wood – Road”
And in time, when the massive baulks of black oak will fall down, the
planted oak trees take over there place.
Apiece of memory.
Kevin O’Dwyer /
60 Degrees
While walking in Boora on a winter’s afternoon, I was fascinated by the
strong directional light and the shadows it cast on this unencumbered
landscape. I decided to use a series of equilateral triangles of decreasing
size that would cast shadows on the landscape and interact with each
other as the sun moved during the morning and evening hours.
The sculpture was fabricated from materials long associated with the
industrial heritage of the cutaway bog- railway track, railway sleepers and
steel plate. Two of the triangular forms were made from oak sleepers
bolted to a steel armature; the sleepers were recently removed from
a disused bog train railway line laid in the 1950’s. The wood triangles
symbolised the old use of the bog. The centre triangle was made
from stainless steel and symbolises the new use of the Parklands.
The triangular icons are held in place using railway track, which once
facilitated the movement of peat to the Ferbane power station by the bog
train.
Marianne JØrgensen /
Happiness
The artwork Happiness is created by cutting the word happiness into
the surface of this particular landscape, where the top soil consists of
black peat. Happiness is cut very deep into the turf by hand in the old-
fashioned way and according to old methods in order to produce the
most precise imprint of the text. The written word expresses a longing
for happiness. The fragility contained in this word is demonstrated by the
fact that the imprint in the turf is subject to constant change, caused by
weather, wind and oblivion.
Caroline Madden / Maurice MacDonagh / Naomi Seki /
Cycles Raised Line boora stacks
The work Cycles is a conglomeration of ideas derived of Lough Boora’s Harvested peat has inherent limitations as a material for Land Art. It is This work is one of my tree series. While working in the fabrication
inherently beautiful landscape and wealth of cultural heritage. It focuses so vulnerable to erosion as to be unstable, yet it is the core substance of workshops of Boora Works I found some disused chimneystacks.  I was
on the cyclical nature of land and mankind’s interaction, be it ownership Lough Boora. This led me to the idea of containment- to create a container attracted to their colour and texture. I decided to make a sculpture, which
or the purpose for which the land is used. for the harvested peat within a form that derives from, and is relevant incorporated eleven of the former chimneystacks. 
to, the landscape of Lough Boora. Everything about Boora is essentially The chimneys were filled with peat and set into a specially constructed
The overall sculptural form proposes a crown referencing the early
horizontal in form: the peat works, machine paths, rails, roads, even the wooden frame made of Douglas fir. I planted the stacks with heather and
Kingship of Ireland. At the base of the sculpture are twelve blade forms,
waterways are linear and it is to this I refer with the form of my piece- a birch, both native to Lough Boora Parklands. My intention was to give life
symbolic of blades engaged to cultivate the earth. The raised linear stone
100 metre long galvanised steel container to be filled with harvested peat. back to the chimneystacks within the landscape.
wall which emanates from each blade into the landscape stands, as a
At just over a metre high it will stand as a line in the landscape, in the
recorded memory of the scaring required in bringing forth new life.
same way that old peat beds have left lines over the years.
An arc fabricated from a recycled Bord na Mona train rail that had been
originally used for harvesting peat positions the blade form. These arcs
reach up into the sky then bend at the top to signify growth bending under
the weight of fruit that is new life. New life is represented by the red seed
forms spiralling out from the top of each arc to start a new cycle. The regal
colour red simultaneously symbolizes life and death thus, providing a
complete cycle.
Published by Sculpture in the Parklands to coincide with the 13th International Peat Congress. Special thanks to Dr. David Bellamy, Bord na Mona, AES, International Peat Congress, Offaly
County Council, Dr. Ian Russell, Oonagh Young, Una Parsons, Brendan O’Loughlin, Val Trodd,
Peatlands
Sinead O’Reilly, Leigh Ann Seale, Tom Dolan and the participating artists.
An exhibition that explores the unique crossroads between the peatlands and
contemporary art practice.
For further information please contact:
Curated by Ruarí Ó’Cuív and Kevin O’Dwyer
Kevin O’Dwyer
Original essay: Dr. Ian Russell
Director
Exhibition venue: Aras an Chontae, Tullamore, Co. Offaly, Ireland
Sculpture in the Parklands
Officially launched by David Bellamy, botanist, author and broadcaster, on June 8, 2008.
info@sculptureintheparklands.com
Catalogue edited and produced by Kevin O’Dwyer
www.sculptureintheparklands.com
Design by Oonagh Young and Clare Lynch, Design HQ
Print Management: Design HQ
Front cover photograph: James Fraher, International Sculpture Symposium 2002
Additional photographs by James Fraher, Tom Egan, Kevin O’Dwyer