ROSALIND LOWRY

Endangered Species List 481

- Irish Linen, paint, inks, recycled fabric - 

LOCATION NO. 5

Endangered Species List 481 is a textile installation dedicated to the 481 species on the red list for Ireland. The list includes over 60 species of moths, 85 local loved birds, otters, the Irish hare, and old romantic creatures like the corncrake.
The work pays tribute to each species with a linen shape marked or drawn or stitiched, but they are all included.
The work is made on linen, another part of our heritage and landscape that has disappeared. Linen damask weaving is on the red list of endangered crafts along with coracle making, glove
making and many other old crafts such as whitework and goldwork.
The artist had an old aunt who worked in the Fine Needlework Section of an Irish Linen Mill. She recalls visiting the factory as a child and growing up in a house full of linen.
Endangered Species List 481 is a cry for help for each of the species on the list, it is made as a constructed textile installation, hand painted and drawn on linen which has been dyed in tea, Thompson’s Tea of Belfast.
The linen works are now placed in a range of locations along the Lagan towpath route for people to take away and hopefully connect to the species they have taken, and help that species in any way they can.


ARTIST STATEMENT

Rosalind Lowry is a Land Artist and Sculptor based in County Antrim who also works internationally. In 2021 she was elected as a Member of the Royal Society of Sculptors and was awarded a Carnegie Award for Design and Placemaking, and the Social Art Award from the Institute for Art & Innovation in Berlin.
Her areas of focus are the human commodification of the land, the disappearing landscape and its heritage and folklore, ecological destruction and the resulting social conflict, and the history and effects of common land laws in Ireland.
She creates new and imagined environments to highlight the disappearing species and landscape in Ireland, and the effects of human commodification of the land.
Her work is created as temporary sculptural installations and land art works and she works in response to a place and time, creating work as an intervention.
These works can often be dismantled and reused in future works, thus creating a lineage and root system throughout her practice, where materials from works made several years ago can still live on in new pieces. This includes the use of unfired clay, porcelain and textiles and pushing the materials
used, in a sustainable way.
Although her work is created to highlight environmental issues, she would always hope to deliver this in a beautiful conclusion, paying tribute to the land, heritage, and subject.

︎: @rosalindlowry

︎: www.rosalindlowryartist.com