‘… appropriation frequently effects a more decisive journey away from the informing text into a wholly new cultural product and domain, often through the actions of interpolation and critique as much as through the movement from one genre to others.’
(Sanders, 2016: 35)
These Islands, Slievemore, Dooagh, Keel East, Co. Mayo (2013/7) is a single channel HD video with stereo sound, of 9:46 duration, filmed, directed, and edited by Peter Maybury. These Islands was first exhibited at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. This is a filmed response to the unauthorised development on commonage at Slievemore, Dooagh, Keel East, Co. Mayo. A concrete structure 4.5m in height and 30m in diameter comprising 26 piers and lintels and recalling a henge, it was the subject of controversy having been erected over a weekend without planning permission, and was, after appeal, declared an unauthorised development with orders for its demolition and the return of the land to its prior condition. This ‘unauthorised development’ is appropriated as a found image or ‘text’ embodying issues of land ownership, boundary, public and private, community, authority and description.
Inter Alia (2013), co-authored by Tom dePaor and Peter Maybury, was presented as a parallel contextual text when the film first exhibited, and was subsequently published as a discrete text in San Rocco – What’s Wrong with the Primitive Hut?134 134. San Rocco (2013) ‘What’s Wrong with the Primitive Hut?’ (8). Milan, San Rocc. The text is an account of the incomplete construction of the unauthorised development structure; the ensuing dispute through the High Court; and the subsequent appeal and inspection on behalf of the Planning Board and the ensuing determination.135 135. Curiously this text was used (unauthorised) as the research basis of a text in Foley, M. (2014) ‘Development of exempted development’, The Brief, The Official Journal of the Irish Institute of Legal Executives, 2014. Dublin, The Irish Institute of Legal Executives.
The intertextual modality of Appropriation in These Islands, Slievemore, Dooagh, Keel East, Co. Mayo (2013), is examined through the film itself, through its original staging for exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and through its subsequent incorporation, with These Islands, Ballysadare, Co. Sligo (2017) into a diptych forming part of the exhibition I See Earth: Building and Ground (2022). Both These Islands films take a ‘found’ subject as text for appropriation (the ‘henge’ at Achill; the abbey at Ballysadare), through which to reflect on issues of property, materials, boundaries, resources and ownership.
I first visit the Achill site as a text for appropriation, and revisit it within the work as site of bricolage (the film itself is appropriated for I See Earth), and in the thesis for its self-reflexive devices, and for its questioning of the evidentiary nature of visual and audio material. The first These Islands film takes as a given or found object the unauthorised development on commonage at Slievemore, Dooagh, Keel East, Co. Mayo. As an entity this structure is ambiguous. Although renowned for being erected over a weekend (and left incomplete after the issuing of a court order to desist), it was clearly a sizeable and thoroughly planned project. Significant ground work was done in advance, carving out with trucks a turning circle in the bog and banking the spoil around the this. Foundations were poured in readiness for the siting of the structure’s piers and lintels which were pre-cast in concrete in Co. Galway and transported by truck on the weekend they were erected. The structure is attributed to (bankrupt) builder and property developed Joe McNamara who chose not to let his underlying intentions be known, although he is notorious for previous protests including in 2010 driving a cement mixer bearing the lettering ‘TOXIC BANK ANGLO’ into the gates of Leinster House (the Irish Parliament). McNamara in his referral to the An Bord Pleanála Board of Appeals argued the development should be exempt from planning by making reference to certain exempt developments such as ornamental garden, lighthouse, beacon, buoy, burial ground, self-feed silo or assembly yard, but ultimately claiming its purpose was unimportant. The Board however determined that the structure was unauthorised as its function was unclear and did not sit within existing exempt categories.136 136. Online searches now return results referring to it as sculpture, Stonehenge replica, and it is listed as an attraction on Tripadvisor.