January 2011, The Joinery

video piece

When I was young, my younger brother and I were given two beech trees. A local man, Paddy Whelan (historian and tree lover), planted them at the back of our house. I helped plant mine, and my brother helped plant his.

Some years later, my mother tied a dog chain around my dear brother's tree. Many dogs later, the tree out grew the chain thus choking itself to a slow and hysterically gothic death. It was cut down before it fell down.

Inside and outside of The Joinery a tree will be presented, broken up and re-worded. But it is certainly not my dear brother's tree - that was used as firewood a number of years ago. This was an outdoor installation at the Joinery. The piece was lit between 6pm and 9pm each night, from the 20th to the 25th of January. At 7.30pm on the evening of the 20th there was a very short reading by Marta Fernandez Calvo of an excerpt from a short story called Design No. 108. This took place on the footpath across from The Joinery.