Jackie McGrath is a socially engaged visual artist. Her work is about our physical and spiritual embodiment within nature and our oceans. This exhibition work was made with Kilkee scuba diving club, K.S.A.C of which she is a member. Within her work she speaks of rituals and connections, of being immersed within nature and how it has transforms us. Our landscapes have power over our perceptions of time and self. When we enter the sea, we experience a metamorphose. We see and experience things differently, our sense of presence becomes overwhelming. Through Jackie’s mediums of photography and drawing she draws the viewer into different worlds.
Jackie took a photograph every day during the lockdown, of the ocean and the woods both of which she lives near by. As everything slowed down in the pandemic, people became a lot more aware of, and in tune with their natural surroundings.
People began to think more about the huge effects our capitalistic culture is having on our planet. On these images she has sewed maps of oil pipelines that lay on our sea beds, on the coasts of America, England and Ireland. She has also sewed with plastic fishing gut picked off the local beach. Making people aware.