Black Marble Words

Black Marble Words

Mapping the imagined landscape of culture and identity has been my preoccupation. In making and positioning works in historic places such as Kells and Ystrad Fflur, I try to connect with some of the legends and histories of these places and develop 'artefacts' that relate to this research. The fact that the great medieval Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320-80) is buried in Ystrad Fflur started a train of thought. The song Carrickfergus, which mentions Kilkenny’s 'marble stone as black as ink’ continued this process. Kells was also a place of poetry; in fact it was razed to the ground in 1327 because of ‘disrespect’ given to the poetic work of the powerful Earl of Desmond.
Ireland and Wales are both places where elegiac words are recorded on slabs of stone, both ruined sites the resting place of poets and dreamers.

Iwan Bala May 1st 2006.

With thanks to; Lachrymosa, Robert Kennedy and the Kilkenny Quarry who supplied the stones.