There’s a Dear Old Spot I Cherish and Where the Argideen River Flows are stills from a performance piece I created in October 2024, in the Argideen River, West Cork. The river flows through the valley beneath my family home and has become a deeply personal and recurring space in my work.

The performance involved slowly entering the river and submerging myself, morphing my body to resemble a rock emerging through the water. This action was repeated at different sites along the river over the course of two hours, and the entire piece was filmed and photographed. The performance marked a return to home, to nature, to what matters. It felt almost baptismal: a moment of becoming part of the landscape, not just moving through it.

The titles of both works are drawn from a poem found on Dúchas.ie, the National Folklore Collection. Written by Cornelius McSweeney, the poem opens: “There’s a dear old spot I cherish, where the Argideen River flows.” Including this language bridges local history with the present moment — a way of honouring shared connection to place, while reimagining it through a contemporary lens.