Re:Public was an exhibition and a series of events at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios in Dublin which posed the question, 'can something happen in public again?'
I knew I would be on residency at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh at the time of the show and so I agreed with curator Daniel Jewesbury to send images taken in Pittsburgh to a fax machine placed in the gallery space. I sent one a day at a fixed time.
Although I had thought that I was prepared for it, the level of car dependency in Pittsburgh was still a bit of a shock to the system. The images I faxed back to Ireland were taken while exploring the city's spaces on foot.
As well as referencing my non-driving experience of a landscape designed for drivers, the title is also alludes to Kerouac's
On the Road, which legend has it, was written on a single roll of paper using a typewriter. My mental archetype of a fax machine uses a single roll of paper and for this piece, I imagined it spooling out of the machine onto the gallery floor. The reality is that fax machines have been using standard printer paper for years. So I designed a web-like pattern of wooden battens to be attached to the gallery wall. A friend constructed it in my absence and the faxes were pinned to it each day as they arrived.
Between the roads was produced with the kind support of
the Mattress Factory.
Curated by Daniel Jewesbury.
With thanks to
Sam Keogh.