Location: Ireland, Leitrim
Credit: Shane Finan
Initiative: Belmont Forum CRAs (CCH 2023)
Project: FIRECULT
Story: FIRECULT was investigating the effect of wildfires on cultural heritage. Shane Finan was one of three artists in residence on the project, tasked with exploring the local effects of such loss in a case study in Ireland, partnered with University College Dublin and the Irish Uplands Forum.
In rural Ireland, many wildfires happen in upland heath areas and then spread into forestry. Some of these fires start with the highly flammable plant known internationally as ‘gorse’, and with local names in Ireland including ‘whin’, ‘furze’ and ‘aiteann’.
In folk histories, gorse/aiteann was an important crop. It was cultivated and grown for its importance, particularly for fires in homes, limekilns and communal ovens. It was also used as a building material, for animal bedding and forage, and for many other purposes. Today, it is seen as a weed in upland areas and until recently it was burned off in large controlled burns which are now mostly no longer legal.
For the project, Shane wanted to highlight the loss of intangible cultural heritage like the folk heritage associated with a plant that is now disregarded or even loathed. He created charcoal from the branches of gorse/aiteann and then created large-scale drawings from the charcoal. The drawings represent the old cultural heritage of the plant, and give it status and importance. They were then burned, to illustrate the destruction of cultural heritage; the photographs now represent all that remains of the drawings as a representation of a cultural object, just as the plant itself lives on as a memory of its own once highly-regarded cultural status.