Description
In September 2026, I joined academic and theorist Robert Kilroy for an In Conversation event at Doolin Cave, County Clare, as part of the launch of a new vision for the cave and its developing sculpture park. Our conversation emerged from Robert’s encounter with my practice-based research, The Feral Cat and the Unattainable Truth: Imaginal Thresholds of Mide and Oweynagat in Practice-Based Inquiry (2026), and from our shared interest in Lacanian Theory and its co-relation to jungian and post-jungian studies and the relationship between artistic practice, mythology and landscape.Central to the discussion was the idea of landscape as more than setting or subject: as an active participant in artistic and imaginative experience. We explored the Fifth Province, or Mide, as an imaginal space in which apparently opposing worlds might encounter one another. This opened onto a wider discussion of caves as thresholds and of descent as both a physical and an imaginal process.
The particular setting of Doolin Cave gave these ideas an immediate material presence. To descend underground is to enter landscape. Scale, light, sound, bodily orientation and ordinary perceptions of time are altered. In this sense, the cave offered both a site and a method: a space in which artistic practice might become a form of attentive encounter with what lies beyond familiar ways of knowing.
The conversation connected strongly with my research at Oweynagat, the Cave of the Cats at Rathcroghan, where descent, mythology and the unconscious have become central to my practice. Our exchange began an ongoing dialogue around art, myth and the possibility of understanding the Irish landscape as an imaginal terrain through which new relationships between psyche, place and creative practice might emerge.
| Period | 19 Sept 2026 |
|---|---|
| Event type | Seminar |
| Location | IrelandShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |