Artist Gallery Talk Friday 6 October at 1pm

Dreaming of a village is an installation comprising two- and three-dimensional works and video. This work draws on research into historic land ownership in the townlands in the immediate vicinity of the artist’s home in rural County Down.

In the course of carrying out the research, including collecting information from Griffith’s Valuation and maps in the Public Records Office, the artist discovered that an area opposite her house, which is now a tree plantation, had until at least the 1830s been farmland and supported numerous tenant farmers and their families.

The video and installation feature stones from the local area which have been used traditionally for both farm buildings and boundary walls. Drawings, based on the farm buildings still visible on the 1834 Ordnance Survey map of the area now covered in trees, are also used in both the video and the installation.

Other drawings are derived from the Griffith’s Valuation maps (1863) showing each local townland, outlined using thick red lines, and its subdivision into plots or “tenements”, using thinner red lines. In much of the locality these plots, frequently delineated by stone walls, were the parcels of land purchased by tenant framers as a result of the Irish Land Acts, and form the basis of current land ownership.

Artist’s Talk: Una Walker will give an informal talk about the origins and inspiration for the work in the exhibition, and answer questions from the public.

Una Walker is an artist and writer based at Flax Art Studios in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She has exhibited extensively in Ireland and internationally, making site and context specific installation, audio and video works, and works on paper. Site specific installation works have been constructed in diverse locations including military fortifications, derelict factories and a cathedral. From 2008-2015 she was a Research Fellow at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and a member of the Digital Repository of Ireland Core Implementation Team. The Covid pandemic lockdowns provided an opportunity to make drawings, audio, and video works inspired by places very close to her home.

www.unawalker.com