S O L A S T A L G I A

The Dean Art Studios

October 12th-22nd

Solastalgia was an experiential exhibition that showcased a new body of work, on which Aoife Scott had been working on during her time at The Dean Art Studios. The sensual installation was loosely based around the new concept Solastalgia, coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht. Solastalgia - an amalgamation of the words solace and nostalgia, is the feeling of distress and anxiety caused by environmental change threatening one's surroundings or home.

This exhibition focused on a personal journey of reconnecting with, and returning to the natural world by way of rediscovering one’s inner child and the process of play. In her research, the artist returned to places in Ireland, such as Gweedore in Donegal and Cleggan in Connemara, which hold the memories of her childhood adventures.

As a printmaker Scott always considers the marks and impressions she makes within her practice and in her daily life. This body of work was inspired by tracking journeys across land and sea, as well as those important and grounding collisions and encounters with nature during childhood years, now tinged with dystopian, ‘solastalgic’ feelings of unease and anxiety. Using beauty as a call to action, she hoped to stimulate an important conversation about the personal and collective marks and impressions we make on the living world and their meaning in the context of climate emergency.

Scott invited the viewers to take their shoes off upon entering the exhibition, to ground themselves and to walk mindfully through the space.

Graphic Studio x Ipsos B&A Commission 2024

Every year since 1989, B&A have commissioned and showcased original art works from an Irish artist in collaboration with Graphic Studio Dublin. I was honoured to have been chosen as the 35th artist for 2024. Find out more below.

THE PRINTS

Being an avid year-round sea swimmer and mountain runner, Aoife’s mark-making finds inspiration in those liminal areas where water and land, sky and earth, meet and discharge their energies. In her three prints for Ipsos B&A —‘Lán Mara, Gaoth Dobhair’ I, II, III’— the artist has created a series of dramatic images that reflect her responses to the power and beauty of the sea at Gaoth Dobhair in Donegal, charting the ebb and flow of its dazzling palette of colours with a remarkable fidelity to felt, personal experience.

THE TECHNIQUES

The prints were created using multi-plate colour etching techniques, combining hard ground line and soft ground with aquatint spit-bite and sugar lift. White ground—which breaks down as it is being etched in the acid bath—yielded some beautiful deep organic marks that helped to suggest the liveliness of surf on water, and the fathomless depths below. Each work is printed on Magnani Litho 280 gsm blue, a paper we were delighted to discover for the project.