Lough Boora Parklands

A trench passageway of railway sleepers beneath the turf bank surface.

Sculpture Concept

sculpture by: Alan Counihan

Alan Counihan’s piece entitled “Passage” involved cutting a trench into a raised bank of turf, creating a passageway lined with railway sleepers, leading to free standing vertical rails and sleepers which reach towards the sky.   On working on this piece the artist wished to explore mans relationship with his landscape, how it is inhabited, remembered and imagined.

Alan expressed a desire to “explore beneath the great flatness of Boora bog so that the experience of engagement with the work might also feel like an engagement with time, the past and the processes of material decay."

Development and installations of this piece of work took place over a three week period from August 31st to September 18th 2009 and involved the collaboration and support of a number of groups: Bord na Móna,Sculpture in the Parklands, Offaly County Council, Lough Boora Parklands Group, Coillte and the Arts Council