CAG.3067 Sarah O’Flaherty, Veiled (Tunnel).3, 2020, photographic print on Hahnemühle paper, 45 x 60 cm. Purchased, the Artist, 2021. © the artist.

WORK OF THE WEEK!

As our exhibition, BOTANICA: The Art of Plants enters its final two weeks, we are focusing on a featured artwork: Veiled (Tunnel).3 (2020) by Sarah O’Flaherty.

Representing ferns and other wild-growing plants or weeds, this is one of a trio of photographs that address urgent themes of ecology, temporality, and transformation in the environment. The dark-green tonality and tendril-like fern forms are at once petrified and potentially sinister.

The manner in which the artist captures or records their forms behind a layer of polythene suggests a sense of containment, suffocation, and even decay. Any feelings of alarm this imagery generates may subside, however, when we consider the natural processes of growth, respiration, and the very life cycle of plants.

Previously exhibited in Visions of an Unsettled Earth (2020) at Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, this photograph joined the national collection – along with its two companion works – last year.

Sarah O’Flaherty (b.1963) is a Cork-based artist who has exhibited widely, both locally and nationally, and teaches at TUS Limerick School of Art & Design.

Veiled (Tunnel).3 (2020) by Sarah O’Flaherty is featured in BOTANICA: The Art of Plants, which must close at 4pm, Sunday 25 September.

Open daily | Free entry

Tune into The Arts House with Elmarie Mawe on Cork’s 96FM and C103FM every Sunday morning as Conor Tallon chats with curator Michael Waldron about each WORK OF THE WEEK! Listen back to this week’s chat here:

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