Architect Part 1 (2025) 5 min
A new film by artist Laura Gannon
Featuring architect Jessica Reynolds vPPR Architects
Composition Susan Stenger
Film Screening / Artist Talk >>>
The Mick Lally Theatre, Druid Ln, Galway
14:00 – 15:00 h, Sunday 12 October
Tickets: Free admission, no registration required.
‘Architect Part 1’ is a new short film directed by artist Laura Gannon, featuring architect Jessica Reynolds and with sound composition by Susan Stenger. Set in rural County Mayo, the film reveals the interior and exterior of a house standing alone on the side of a mountain called Devils mother. Abandoned to the elements of time and nature, newer houses were built along the road while this house has stood empty for over forty years.
A family history is subtly revealed as the film layers architecture in a rural environment with the movement of people and the passing of time. The house is surrounded by fields of sheep, the main agriculture in this region on the border of Mayo and Connemara. Jessica’s grandmother was one of thousands who emigrated to England in the 1950s, as Ireland’s population declined. The house remains empty, a monument to this mass emigration and the emptying out of people from the landscape.
Revisiting her family’s former home, Jessica appears at punctuated moments, amplified by beats and drone sounds. A figure in the landscape, she reintroduces herself back into her family history having last visited at the age of nine.
Artist Biography
Born in Galway, Ireland. Lives and works in Co. Cork. Gannon lived in London for 20 years, where she received a master’s in fine art (MFA) from Goldsmiths University.
Gannon's work oscillates between sculpture, painting and film. Recent works include abstract paintings made with metallic ink on linen. The linen has been subjected to multiple processes to reveal its corporeality: folding, bending, wrinkling, suggesting their raw physicality and directness. Gannon's films mark a parallel to her sculptural paintings with their articulation of temporality, light, space and the act of looking, intimate portraits of distinctive architectural buildings. Buildings include Eileen Gray’s E1027 and a 1960s modernist church in Connemara designed by Leo Mansfield, featuring the stained glass of Phyllis Burke.
Exhibitions include: Cubitt Studios, London, June 2025, (group). Britta Rettberg Gallery, Munich, Nov 2024 (group). Drawing Room Biennal, London 2024 (group). TERRA, Burgundy, France 2023, (group). Frieze London, October 2022 (group). Kate MacGarry, London, 2022 (solo). Making and Momentum, Wexford Arts Centre 2022 & National Museum, Dublin, Ireland, 2021(group). VISUAL, Carlow, Ireland, 2019 (solo).
Education: 2008-2009 Lux associate artist programme, London, U.K. Goldsmiths College, University of London, U.K. MFA. 2002-03. Belfast School of Art, B.F.A 1990.