Below are a selection of pieces from my “100 Days of Ruin” series, part of #The100DayProject in the spring/summer 2020.
In this series, I explored the subject of ancient burial sites in Ireland (commonly known as ring barrows or round barrows). In Celtic myth, these sacred sites are liminal places, often purported to provide access to the Otherworld or land of the dead. Unlike in many other ancient cultures that imagined a dismal underworld of wandering souls, for the Celts the land of the dead was a place of surpassing beauty, full of light, music and abundance. This pre-Christian mythology contributed to later folk legends about hidden hoards of gold buried beneath the ruins. (As did the actual discovery of a few such hoards by archeologists in the 19th and 20th centuries!)
In this series, I wanted to play with this theme of opposites in tension — the living and the dead, ancient and modern, wealth and ruin, dark and bright, and the contrast between the organic forms of landscape and the geometric lines and measurements of archeological survey maps. My hope was to evoke the joy and elusiveness of the Celtic Otherworld and its intimate relationship with landscape.
Alison Leigh Lilly 