Elayne O CONNOR
Shortlisted 2010

work shown : Humility, make it your daily aim
1 foot x 3 feet
(click on picture to see larger image)

Project

Over the last three months I have been working on new research while staying in Belmont, County Offaly. My stay has helped me realize that I want to continue my area of research in sport. While there I have been looking into several different topics but it keeps returning to the idea of what brings a community together, and what I find to be the common element, land! Funding would help in the possibility of continuing this research, it would allow me to begin a new phase in my work, creating something that I feel could open sport and the idea of community in the landscape to new audiences.

Extract from Artist Statement

While living in Offaly for the past three months, I have used my time to observe the community and what it is that allows them to express themselves as individuals in the landscape. I not only looked at the sport side of this community but I also looked at areas of work. Areas such as the bogs, factories and commuting.

What I found was so intriguing, both in the environment of sport and work, how interdependent people are on each other, yet how individual their experiences were. And how the landscape controlled and limited their abilities, taking the situation out of their control.

I want to use what I have learned and add to these experiences, researching largely in the area of sport as I think it is the fundamental of all expression, and reveals all sides of life, its emotions and its limitations … I would like my new work to capture the emotion and drama or lack of, which is inherent in life and sport in the less than obvious ways.