Sculpture in the Parklands
2002-2010
David Kinane (Ireland)
As other artists at Lough Boora have noticed the industrial bog is criss-crossed by lines of machine cuts, drains and railways. While observing this I was also drawn to the image of the Ferbane cooling towers, as I remember them on the horizon. The towers ironically, while appearing to be all curves, are in fact made of straight lines arranged in a circle.
Now I could use the steel and wood of the railway and arrange them in a circle I could build a stable, skeletal construction. I could reference the industrial heritage of the cutaway bog in the choice of materials and by the form they take. From the exterior the sculpture offered an open patterned lattice and in the interior a view of the sky framed by a swirling upward movement
The lines of the piece can be imagined to converge at this place from infinity. Organic wood and machine steel combine in it. Skill and creativity connect between art and the artisans at the Boora workshops.
Dave Kinane’s Boora Convergence recreates something of the industrial aesthetic and places it in a nature site. The form itself recalls the twin Ferbane Cooling Towers that dominated the landscape. They were all you could see in the bog, and as the sole vertical elements, these enigmatic man-made artefacts of an energy supply system from an earlier, post-war era were simply what they were. Steel and wood recycled from the old railway, and with a playful rhythm of wood and steel ascending patterns that recall the cuts, drains and railways that criss-crossed the industrial bog, Kinane’s sculpture provides contrasts with the expanse of skies, and ever shifting weather systems at Lough Boora.
John Grande Art/Nature Dialogues Environmental Writer and curator
Boora Convergence
2006
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