Rickaby, Tony.

Looking at a group of buildings in Ireland / Tony Rickaby.

Londonderry [Northern Ireland] : Orchard Gallery, 1981.

16 unnumbered pages : illustrations ; 21 x 30 cm

I sit outside Ballyfarnon Post Office, drawing some of the buildings that I can see. Ballyfarnon (Beal Atha Fearnain - Mouth of the Ford of the Alders) is a village in the Republic of Ireland, in Co. Roscommon near to the borders of Co. Leitrim and Co. Sligo. The River Feorish flows around the back of the village which, including outlying farms and houses, has a population of about 300. It has the presence common to, and peculiar to, small towns and villages in Ireland. The plain cemented buildings, painted white or in strong pastels of orange, green, cream and brown, and topped by grey slate eaveless roofs. The one main street the same colour as hr grey sky: wide, without traffic markings and with an uncertainty as to whether a pavement exists or not. The strong, unadorned lettering of the signs above the shops and pubs. The pots of flowers and plants outside the houses: on the window sills or on the ground against the walls. Because it is now one-thirty in the afternoon, the shops are shut for the dinner hour and no-one is to be seen. Earlier, my view and my understanding of this place was of the people moving about it. People I knew and said hello to, or vaguely recognised and nodded to, or had never seen before and whose peculiarities I noted. Empty of people, Ballyfarnon is now, for me, a collection of buildings, of objects whose physicality is heightened by the quiet at this moment (broken now and then by the noise of the jackdaws on the chimney pots, a tractor somewhere, the barking of a dog) and by my memories of this village and my searching for changes I don't wish to find. Although the buildings of this village do not dominate or intimidate me in the way that, for instance, the buildings of Commerce or State in London do, they seem to act upon me more strongly: it is easier for me to touch them. In contrast to the complexity and ungraspability of life in a centre of modern capitalism, an object such as one of these small buildings appears to me as an obvious and reassuring lump of reality: a thing which makes sense in a confusing, rapidly changing world of events and opinions which can never properly be pinned down and understood.--www.tonyrickaby.co.uk.

Social conditions
Ballyfarnan (Ireland)
Ireland Social conditions.
Irlande Conditions sociales.
Ireland

artists' books (books)
Artists' books.
Livres d'artistes.

Localisation: Bibliothèque main m 26499
Cote: POM6625; ID:88-B12523
Statut: Disponible