BEATRICE O'CONNELL

14 July 2022 – 14 January 2023 as part of ‘Landmarks’ Collective Exhibition Pearse Museum, Rathfarnham, Dublin

8- 14 June 2022 NCAD MFA Fine Art Graduate exhibition

The spectre of climate crisis looms in my work, specifically the lost connection with nature in a highly technologically mediated society.  

This installation came about through research into the Peppered Moth. In 1902 (British Moths, JW. Tutt) it was discovered that the moth’s pigmentation evolved rapidly through natural selection to blend in with the blackened tree trunks in the polluted industrialised cities. 

As the effect of the pollution on human health and the environment was gradually discovered smokey coal was phased out and the moths reverted to their original state. My video and installation registers the change in the insects’ morphology and the fragility of the wider ecological system. The installation reflects the hopeful story that humans can change the patterns of our behaviour. 

Proto-cinematic devices such as zoetropes are a crucial reference. The emergence of these early forms of entertainment coincided with a sense of disconnection from nature and the subsequent downward spiral into climate crisis.

Lisa Dowling Scott’s keening soundscapes offer a cross-cultural dimension to the ambiguity of loss within this narrative.