Clara work - Mocksim - Some background

A short article I wrote for VAI Newsletter’s Regional Focus on Offaly, 2020 lays the basis for my interest in Clara, and recently resulted in a proposal as follows:

'My parents lived in the town from the mid-1990s, and I would like to carry out research, collaborate and produce new work there. Five separate weeks spent in the area from June 2023 into 2024 will be treated as residencies. Typical approaches to observation for me will include comparing physical walkthroughs of Clara with Street View; documenting via photography and other means; considering traffic flows; wondering about the effects of today’s kinds of employment compared with the era of the Goodbody textile-mill; and not overlooking questions of housing. Outcomes would include prints, readymades, moving image pieces and an artist’s book. The possibility of back-projecting onto windows of the bungalow there will be investigated, in discussion with my mother (whose care is linked to the home via the Fair Deal scheme), sister, and neighbours. The fact that Clara has a rail station with easy links to east and west coasts is significant.'