Describing Architecture

Ramona Burke image_ Chapel Road Gatepost LR©Brian Cregan-8462Brian Cregan-5721

‘Chapel Road Gatepost’ / Ramona Burke

2014

Gicleé print on Fabriano paper
841 x 1189mm

The ‘Chapel Road Gatepost’ image stems from my interest in recording the built environment in and around County Galway, seeking out ‘homemade/self-made’ structures. The gatepost dates from the 1950s and is still in use on a farm, which has been in four generations of my father’s family. It is an interesting example of the commonly seen rural agricultural style of architecture, that artist Fiona Woods has described as ‘the aesthetic of make-do’. Self-designed techniques were used with whatever available materials to construct one-off unique structures that bear the distinctive markings of its makers – in this case the ingenious use of an empty oil barrel as a mould.