Bogskin
RHA, group 2025
Curated by Patrick Murphy
Group show at The Royal Hibernian Academy, Ireland.
BogSkin, an exhibition by the Royal Hibernian Academy, invites us to think about the fact that Ireland’s bogs aren’t simply repositories for our collective unconsciousness, they are precious sustainers of life.
Artists: Robert Ballagh, Veronica Bolay, Tina Claffey, Patrick Collins, Barrie Cooke, Tom De Paor, Laura Fitzgerald, Patrick Hough, Shane Hynan, Finbar Kelly, Catriona Leahy, Fiona McDonald, Siobhan McDonald, Sean McSweeney, Hughie O’Donoghue, Nigel Rolfe, Noel Sheridan, Maria Simonds-Gooding, Camille Souter, and Amelia Stein.
https://rhagallery.ie/events/exhibitions/bogskin/ for details.
Bogskin, 31 Jan, 2025 – 20 April, 2025
Anaerobe is an artwork that uses paleontology and botany with the reconstruction of an odor that preserved a manuscript to explore the pharmacy of bog plants beneath out feet.
Anaerobe has been created on the occasion of Bogskin by perfumer Julie Barretta. The bog, a repository of thousands of years of buried slippery terrain is distilled into a scent. The notes are guided by elements of the acid bath of the bog, the soil, the plants and the swampy aroma of anaerobic decay, through tinctures, notes of ink, humus, papyrus, and dust—a nod to the evolution of writing systems inspired by the miraculous discovery of the Faddan More Psalter—buried in a bog for 1,300 years.
With thanks to Perfumer, Julie Barretta.
A library of Smells
Woven basalt, whole calfskin and smoke using a seismogram to inscribe signals onto paper. Dimensions 114 cm square
Solar Skin (2019)
Medium: Reclaimed glass house, animal gut skin and thread.
A glass house stands alone, inspired by the magic of bog preservation - in which animal gut skin is sutured together with paintings of bog plants and a pine tree in a delicate shroud suspended in a state of transformation lingering between life and death.
With thanks; Prof Jennifer McElwain, 1711 Chair of Botany at Trinity College Dublin (IRL)
Installation view, RHA, (2025). Photo credit Ross Kavanagh
Filtered time
Cosmic Gas is a series of works on paper that explores ideas of what will manage to live in the ruins we have made. Consisting of both drawing and lithographic prints, they bear the direct imprint of plant fragments collected from bog sites, what used to be living organisms, which over time have become gaseous. The drawings aim to convey the light and dark histories from which they emerge — recounting stories of life and decay — from remedy/medicine to the poisoning of an ecosystem.
Cosmic Gas (2023)
Review by Gemma Tipton, Irish Times March 2025. (PDF version).