In Mantua me genuit / I was born in Mantua

Recent video work, June 2008

'In Mantua me genuit / I was born in Mantua', is a video piece which resulted from a short residency at The Mantua Project in Co Roscommon.

The starting point for the work came from the throw-rugs hanging on the washline outside my studio window, and the fact that I was painting watercolours inspired by the modernist grid. Over the days I sat looking out at them I started to see an analogy between ideas of rigid and loose organisation, planned and organic development, urban and rural divides etc, as I worked through my own process of settling into the residency house.

The remote location is a great place to start working on new things and part of what made the experience so special for me was finding my Great and my Great-great grandparents graves in graveyards nearby, neither of which I had ever visited before.

The name of this piece comes from the first words of Virgil's biography, quoted in a local history of the townland of Mantua which relates the real reason for the exotic naming of this place. In old Irish it was simply known as 'Mointeach', which means 'boggy'.