These Islands, Slievemore, Dooagh, Keel East, Co. Mayo

These Islands, Slievemore, Dooagh, Keel East, Co. Mayo (2013, 2017) 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. These Islands, when exhibited at the Irish Museum of Modern Art at The Everyday Experience exhibition (2013), was displayed in a small room with a chair, a one person cinema. The chair was borrowed from the Venice Biennale, again raising issues of authorship. The sound from the film played in the room and was also relayed to the museum’s colonnades. Separated from the screen it was experienced as a series of dislocated field recordings, affected by the acoustics of the architecture in which it was played back, and merging with ambient noise.