The Last of the Mohicans: After-images of Sir Roger Casement in the Irish Landscape.

Conor Kelly is a Glasgow based artist, who is undertaking a residency at Bill Drummond’s Curfew Tower in Cushendall, Northern Ireland during late May and June 2009.

The residency provides a focus for Kelly to explore the question of Memorial in reference to Sir Roger Casement, and the potential for the development of a work of art to exist within the public realm.

Roger Casement has remained a divisive figure in Irish life since his execution for treason in 1916. A multi-faceted and controversial character during his lifetime, Casement’s last wish was to be interred near Murlough Bay by the Glens of Antrim. In 1966 his supposed remains were removed from a limed mass grave at Pentonville prison and brought to Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery. Lying today at Murlough however are not the remains of Casement but that of a previous memorial, which was destroyed in the 1950s.

During an intensive three week project Kelly is using the site at Murlough as the point of origin in framing strategies for memorial. A key aspect of the residency is also the attempt to question if an appropriate image exists to aid and form memory in a landscape of conflicting histories.

For more information on Conor Kelly see www.artnews.org/conorkelly

The Curfew Tower residency is facilitated by Void Gallery, Derry.

Blog articles are written by: Conor Kelly.