Dorothy Hunter

Q&A with Dorothy

Tell us about the piece you have made.

- For Gintlíocht I have made two pieces, “tool” and “leftover”, that are installed across four locations at UFM. The works are linked: “tool” is a set of three skewed fire-iron forms, made by Gerald Monaghan in the forge, and set with long tooth handles, whilst “leftover” takes inherited linen to make a cushion platform for smaller teeth.

What was the motivation behind the piece?

- I was really intrigued by how time’s passage could be both marked and frozen within the museum, and how suspended use of materials could in a way “stop time”. I thought of horse teeth as objects that also encase time - they are how the age of the animal would be verified, and so the animal’s worth-value as a tool would be known. We host general ideas of specific people and creatures in museums. The idiosyncrasy of the objects in the folk museum interiors - somewhat familiar, the origins of a lot of contemporary objects and aesthetics but perhaps unknown in purpose - also made me want to create interventions that sit awkwardly within this and seem only partially purposeful. The objects have potential use value as pillow and pokers but are interrupted and suspended with the museum and in their position as art objects.

Do you think heritage skills are important?

This work wouldn’t have been made without Gerald’s forging skills, the split motifs with the curved forms of the iron were particularly tricky. Heritage skills are necessary for our connection to modes of production, work and craftsmanship, and pose questions as to how we produce and consume. Their perseverance is a kind of resistance to mass consumption and homogenised visual culture; the objects can hold unseen stories and create beautiful and potent forms.

Has the folk museum inspired you in any way?

I worked in the UFM archives to research the framed artworks that are used for furnishing the houses. The idyllic portrayal of pastoral life in the artwork, animals as venerated symbols of industry and natural beauty, felt really apparent in the archive, but this was undercut by one particular framed cartoon drawing. A horse in a street race is being pulled along by a small boy, and a man behind the animal whips it. The man is frustrated; the horse, being a horse, has no expression.

I also spent some time listening to the Folk Museum’s extensive audio archive. In the 1970s and 80s Linda Ballard spoke with people from all around Northern Ireland to gather passed-down stories and folklore to create an oral archive. In her 1985 conversation with local historian Liam MacCarrain about ghost stories, he speaks of Galloper Thompson, who used his horse like a weapon to run people over. After his death he had been sighted several times riding the still-living horse: “the horse fell one time, and he broke his neck and died. And for years afterwards, his ghost supposedly haunted, haunted, haunted the place.” Looking back, I think “leftover” in particular owes a lot to this.

Biography

Dorothy Hunter is a cross disciplinary artist writer and researcher, born in Mid Ulster she now lives and works in Belfast. She is a recent graduate of the Dutch Art Institute’s MA Art Praxis Programme (2020) and holds an MA from the Art in Contemporary World course at NCAD, Dublin (2018). She is a recent participant in the PS2 Freelands Artist Programme (2022-23) and co-editor of Critical Bastards, an Irish Art Publication. 

Recent exhibitions include ‘fully conscious movements, fully different time’ at Golden Thread Gallery Belfast (2023), Anticipated Fictions: Monumental Configurations at PS2, Belfast and 126 Artist-Led Gallery, Galway. The Landis Museum at CCA Derry-Londonderry, and Still (the) Barbarians, EVA International, Limerick.