DUBLIN.- The Douglas Hyde presents a group exhibition with significant works by artists Brook Andrew, Bassam Issa Al-Sabah, Brian Jungen & Duane Linklater, Marianne Keating, Pınar Öğrenci, Jumana Manna, and Kathy Prendergast. Filmworks are presented in biweekly episodes with discursive events throughout the exhibition’s duration. Through film, sculpture and works on paper, the artists presented examine key ideas relating to land – from processes of mapping and nation formation to resource extraction and the enduring impact of colonisation. The exhibition’s title plays on different meanings of land, as a country or state; as a denoted area of possession or occupation; or more literally as the ground beneath our feet.

The first work encountered in the exhibition is Kathy Prendergast’s The Road (2019) presenting a series of excerpts of inclines, slopes and turns bringing into focus small alterations of movement and transition. A series of postcards depicting rivers and roads collected and arranged by the artist create connections and pathways from one image to another, from one location to another. From Abandon to Worry: An Emotional Gazetteer of North America (2003) is a geographical index of all of the towns across the US with emotions in their name. Made over 20 years ago, the work has continued resonance in 2024 against the backdrop of an increasingly polarised nation and the presidential election. At the core of Prendergast’s work is the entanglement of the body and landscape, she points to the subjectivity of maps, power structures, colonialism and the ultimate fragility of borders and territories over time.

On the main level of Gallery 1, a biweekly programme of artist film screenings runs throughout the duration of the exhibition featuring works by artists Brook Andrew, Bassam Issa Al-Sabah, Brian Jungen & Duane Linklater, Marianne Keating, Pınar Öğrenci and Jumana Manna. Bringing together voices from across the globe, the works range from reflections on Indigenous peoples’ rights to land and its resources, to forced migration owing to war, land contestation, and decolonisation.

A central work within the exhibition is Marianne Keating’s Land-Path to Migration (2019-2020), which is presented in Gallery 2. The work reflects on the artist’s longstanding interest in land, the geology that lies beneath us, the traces between Jamaica, Barbados and Ireland (all colonised by Britain until the 20th century), and temporary characteristics of land ownership both by nature and man.

Working with archival materials, found and newly shot footage, text, and sound, Keating explores the broader legacies of British imperialism. Her works Meet Fire with Fire (2022) and A Beautiful Dream (2020-22) which weave Ireland’s struggle for independence to civil rights and self-determination movements elsewhere, will be presented in Gallery 1’s screening programme later in December.

Evident throughout all the works presented is the impact of humans on the land we inhabit. The present moment is wrought by calls for hardening borders, continuing forced migration due to war and inequality, and the lasting impact of colonisation – the destructive process of settling and occupying land.

Through personal and shared histories, the artists examine and re-present the past and the present, to consider how we got here and how we might work toward a more just and equitable future.