2013
Drawings 1600x800mm, Photographic Prints 300x300mm
The Parkway Valley shopping centre began construction at the high water mark of the Celtic Tiger, where Limerick City fades toward the quasi-suburbia of industrial units, shopping, and housing estates strung along the motorway. It is now dormant, abandoned in a state of in-betweenness.
Paused at a specific moment in its construction, it offers divergent futures – decay, completion, or disassembly. The Parkway Valley is a work in process.
The concrete cores stand as memorial, as a contemporary ruin of Ireland. Like the tower houses found dotted around the landscape, it is experienced through the framing device of the car windshield. Here the framing device of the camera is used to re-interpret. It was photographed in a slow way – one frame every two weeks throughout the winter of 2012, documenting the material presence of this ruin.
Its existing condition was thoroughly surveyed and drawn. In my proposal the steel is removed, revealing a landscape of towers. It is then re-used to make limited interventions, a framework for the site to grow into a parkland, a piece of social infrastructure.
Images:
1-2 Parkway Valley Photographs
3 Survey Drawing
4 Survey Drawing: detail
5 Proposal Drawing 1 : Steel Removed
6 Proposal Drawing 2: Inverventions/Framework
7 Exhibit
8-12 Exhibit in context