The Rose Project – 2002

Commentary on the multi-billion dollar rose-growing industry in Kenya – a country that cannot feed itself but where dozens of entrepreneurs, exploit and pollute the soil and ignore human rights, to grow and export Kenya-grown roses to an already over-supplied and over-fed Europe.

The project consisted of:

• a 5-minute film
• 7 billboards, placed along the driveway into DLIADT in Dun Laoghaire
• 100 handmade rose wallpapers

Objective Portraits – 2004

Excessive Pride Vanitas Series – 2005

For the rich merchants, 17th Century Holland was a virtual consumer paradise. To flaunt their wealth, their status in society and their knowledge, the affluent commissioned sumptuous portraits and still lives. And yet, this was not without inner conflict. In reality, the pious Dutch lived uneasily with their new-found wealth…

By including in these still lives objects that referred to the brevity of life and the inevitability of death, the observer was made to contemplate the frailty of man and life’s fleeting pleasures – thus, in some way ‘steadying the vertigo’ that may otherwise have resulted from too much fame, affluence, pride and political power.

The re-contextualised objects in my work tell a similar story of today’s society based on leisure, consumption and expectations.

Images 80x50cm