Mapping Alternative Ulster in Armagh

Mapping Alternative Ulster is on again, this time in the Market Place gallery in Armagh. It runs until 7 January 2017.

The exhibition showcases a dozen map-makers, each taking a very different look at the places we think we know so well. These map-makers are local historians, activists, artists, geographers and urban planners, all interpreting our surroundings in different ways. Together, they cover the ground from Donegal to Down to Armagh. Mapping Alternative Ulster re-thinks our representation on maps.

Comments Please

In the Belfast run of Mapping Alternative Ulster one visitor used the comments book to chart their own tour of the show

Running an exhibition has made me realise the importance of a comments book. I leave an unlined notebook with every run of Mapping Alternative Ulster. I leave it by the exit along with a request that visitors use it to write down their reactions to the works. I have found lots of engagement with the show expressed in the notebooks and, taken together, they indicate that Mapping Alternative Ulster is striking a cord. One visitor commented during the Belfast run of the show: “This exhibition is both fascinating and inspiring – in everyday life we can see maps as quite banal things but the feelings and sentiments that locations can evoke in is very clearly displayed here. Many thanks for helping me look at the map of Ulster in a new way.”

Map of Teelin

I first saw Dan McGinley's map of Teelin, Co. Donegal, pinned to the wall of the community centre in a small village called Kilcar. I was struck by the amount of detail and the sheer size of the map, it is about 150 centimetres tall, and was immediately determined that more people should see it. It was one of the maps that compelled me to organise Mapping Alternative Ulster.

Dan McGinley charted the local place names of several rural locations in Donegal, starting with places he knew from his own childhood. “As a child I found the place names fascinating,” he told me in an email, “they had the quality of incantations.” I am delighted that two of his maps are in the show.

Mapping Alternative Ulster: Strabane

The Mapping Alternative Ulster exhibition is currently running in the Alley Arts Centre, Strabane. A few new maps have been added since the run in Belfast, including a wonderful map of an imagined metro system for Omagh. 'Omagh Metro System' is showing with the work of about a dozen other artist/cartographers, all of whom use maps to promote different ways of looking at where we live.

The map is by Benny Sweeney. Click here for his website.

For more info about the show see; www.mappingalternativeulster.net.

New Map, New Symbols

I am working on a new border map. It will chart some defensive structures, as I have done with a previous map, but includes other border elements too. The key is expanding as I widen my notion of how we attempt to claim and control space.

I have no name for the new map yet.

New Maps, New Prints

Giclée prints are a kind of inkjet print that use fade-resistant, pigment-based archival inks. I'm using the process for the first edition of Fictional Ulster and version 3.1 of The Map of Connections. The difference is clearest in the photographs on The Map of Connections. The greens are rich and deep.

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The Map of Connections is 60 x 85 cm. Fictional Ulster is 50 x 70 cm. They are both editions of fifty.

Mapping Alternative Ulster: Guided Tour

Thank you to everyone who came along on May 31st. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Reading the comments cards that people filled in and gave me after the tour I discovered that one of our number was a tourist who was only spending a couple of days in Northern Ireland. I like to think that he spent his time well. This show is Ulster in a room.

Thank you to Alan Meban for the photos

The exhibition is running until June 22nd. There are a few more events upcoming. See mappingalternativeulster.net for details.

The Map of Connections 3.1

I've put the latest version of The Map of Connections in the Mapping Alternative Ulster show. It is one of my maps of Ireland's border. I have charted on it unofficial border crossings, paths, stiles, gates, footbridges, anything not found on other maps. Most are humble things in themselves but, all together, they seemed to add up to some kind of statement about human irrepressibility. There are 77 connections charted in this version.

It is 60 by 85 centimetres.

The show runs until June 22nd.

Now Open: Mapping Alternative Ulster

For an exhibition in the Ulster Museum, I've gathered the work of about a dozen artist/cartographers, all of whom use maps to promote different ways of looking at where we live. The show is called Mapping Alternative Ulster. It has just opened and will run until June 22nd. I think a lot of this work is important, a lot of it is beautiful, a lot of it is both. A series of events runs along side the show. See: www.mappingalternativeulster.net.

The show is on in the Belfast Room, in the Ulster Museum

The first event is a workshop on 25 May, 11am. It will be run by the team behind the Belfast Sound Map, an online audio portrait of of the city. Visit the map at belfastsoundmap.org. The workshop will explore sound recording and the sonic environment of the city. Participants will be guided through a series of practical exercises (listening and technical) and then given the opportunity to make their own field-recordings to be uploaded to the map.

The workshop is open to anyone 16 or over. The workshop is free but must be booked in advance as only eight places are available. Telephone 028 90440000 (lines open Tuesday to Sunday 10am to 5pm); go to www.nmni.com; or email ulstermuseumreception@nmni.com.

Mapping Alternative Ulster, in preparation

The Belfast Room in the Ulster Museum

Every time I visit this room it is bigger than I remembered it. This is where the Mapping Alternative Ulster exhibition will be opening next month. I am curating the show for the Ulster Museum. See www.mappingalternativeulster.net for more.

Mapping Alternative Ulster

Writing this blog has made me into a keen observer of mapping projects in Ulster. I seek them out whether they are produced by individual artists or groups. I am interested regardless of whatever the map's mission happens to be (a map always has a mission). There is a lot of fascinating work being done by map-makers here. Some of it is beautiful, some of it is important, some of it is both.

Exhibition website

Inside the Ulster Museum

I am please to announce that the Ulster Museum, Belfast, has entrusted me with an exhibition space for next summer. The show I am curating will be called Mapping Alternative Ulster. This show will bring together the work of geographers, mapmakers and urban planners, all of whom interpret the land in different ways. Mapping Alternative Ulster will re-think our surroundings and its representation on maps. Some of the maps going into the show have already featured in this blog, John Carson's Friend Map for example. Others have not.

Watch this space for more information has the exhibition approaches.

Right now I am seeking funding for aspects of the show. Thank you to the Arts Council of Northern Ireland who have already given me assistance.

The exhibition website is www.mappingalternativeulster.net

In Carrick-on-Shannon

Two my maps are being exhibited at The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim. They will be there for a few more days only. The Map of Connections has been painted onto a large wall at the top of the gallery's central staircase.

I introduced the map on the opening night of the exhibition.

The Map of Connections at the Dock

Right now a couple of my maps are being exhibited at The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim. The Map of Connections has been painted onto a large wall, it is the first thing you see as you enter the gallery. Images of each individual connection are projected beside the map, running in a looped slide show. The skilled job of rendering the map was put in the hands of John O'Hara. He is a mural-painter and sign-writer and also works for the Ordnance Survey.



So, all in all, John had the prefect skill set for the task. I am delighted with how the map has turned out. The Map of Connections has been exhibited in various ways over the last few years but this is by far the most handsome.



First, John outlined every part of the map, using pencils of the corresponding colours. The font used was Garamond.


Then everything was painstakingly filled in.



The finished map is about four metres tall.



The image above is Manus McManus installing another part of the show. It is a photo journal of my journey along the border from Lough Foyle to Carlingford Lough.



A new version of The Map of Watchful Architecture is also in the exhibition. It has not so radically evolved since the last version, I've just added lighthouses. Canoeing by some lighthouses in Carlingford Lough last year, I realised that they belong in any collection of "watchful" structures.

The show runs until the end of August.

To accompany the exhibition, I brought a group of people on a hike along a nearby stretch of the border. One participant says a few words about it here. Kindly, he does not mention how I got us lost for a while.

Thank you to John O'Hara and everyone at The Dock who helped put the show together, Claire, Martin, Alice and Manus.

Introducing Fictional Ulster

So far I have made three maps of Ireland’s border. Now I am beginning a new project, this time covering the nine counties of Ulster. Fictional Ulster will locate and chart Ulster’s fictional places, places created by writers and artists down through the years. I hope the map will be fun and intriguing and that it also might offer an insight on how we see ourselves and how others see us. In addition the map may reveal themes in the naming and placement of fictional sites in Ulster.


Where is Ballybeg? Where is Ballycarnamaghery?

Mining the entire history of Ulster literature is too big a task for one person. I welcome contributions from anyone who has knowledge of such fictional places. Perhaps you recall one from a book you’ve read or a film you have seen? Please email me or comment on this blog. The places could be from any art form. Movies and plays as well as books, in or out-of-print. The sites could be towns, rivers, forests, estates, streets, mountains or any other sort of locality.

I’d also like to hear your views on the exact location of sites. Where exactly, for example, is the setting of Brian Friel’s plays, Ballybeg? Where is the setting of the 1937 comedy film ‘Oh, Mister Porter’, Buggleskelly?


Messing about in a border train station called Buggleskelly. Oh, Mr Porter, 1937.

In Belfast, I am attempting to tap the knowledge of the Seamus Heaney Centre to gather the elements for this map. I have made a pin board map of Ulster, cutting each county from a thick piece of cork to produce a wall map a metre and a half wide. I will be installing it in the Seamus Heaney Centre this week and inviting students, staff and visitors to pin up their suggestions directly to the map.

I will report on the progress of Fictional Ulster on this blog in the oncoming months.

Maps on Walls

The Map of Connections 3.0 is an edition of 15. Number one of the edition is currently on show in the Royal Ulster Academy’s annual show. The exhibition is taking place in the Ulster Museum, Belfast, and will run until the 14th of November.


At the RUA show, 2010. My map has a whole wall to itself. It's a rather narrow wall though.

Number two of that edition and two more of my maps, The Map of Encounters 2.0 (1/15) and The Map of Watchful Architecture 1.0 (12/40), were recently purchased by the National University of Ireland at Maynooth. They are on display in the School of English, Media and Theatre Studies.

Dungannon Exhibition

As part of its arts festival Dungannon borough will host an art exhibition in the old Territorial Army garages on Castlehill. The organisers remark that this exhibition space is a contested site. It has been the high vantage point of local powers for centuries, an O'Neill site, a plantation era townhouse, and most recently a base for the British Army. To reflect this history artists were invited to submit work concerned with the transformation or the claiming of space, either personal or public.



I thought they might like The Map of Watchful Architecture, and sure enough, it has been accepted and will feature in the Art on the Hill exhibition. It runs from 1 May until the 10 May 2009. I will print the map on paper for this show, large.

From the Comments Book

The exhibition of the Map of Connections 2.0 and the Map of Encounters 1.0 is now over. A few days ago I went in and painted over the maps with a few coats of white emulsion. Thank you to everyone who visited.

Below, some remarks from the comments book followed by my replies:

“Makes you think different about Ireland and Northern Ireland,” Christopher.
“Some very interesting observations with attractive patterns emerging,” Helen.
“[ … ] place names on the photos would have been informative. Desmond.
“[ … ] Love to hear more about ‘unfriendly’ encounters and where the border gets lost,” Dan.
“Nice work, would love an excuse to explore Ireland this way, [ … ]” Miriam.
“Super duper,” Laura.

Yes, Miriam, I suggest you find that excuse. I suppose it is a part and privilege of artistic practice to go to places people normally do not. Nobody really visits the Border and that might be reason enough to go. Moreover, sections go through memorable country. The bogland north of Lough Derg and around Cuilcagh Mountain had a particular desolate beauty.


Dan, you raise a good point. I did include the vandalism of my car on The Map of Encounters but that is the only negative featured. (The stone pinned to the image, by the way, is the actual stone thrown. Not a stand in stone.) I went on my walks in a generally positive frame of mind and I suspect I was more alive to friendly, or natural, encounters. If I was not in a positive state of mind I probably would have gone home. I attempted to travel wide-eyed, as if seeing everything for the first time. This maybe preserved in the innocent atmosphere of the Map of Encounters. I feel both The Map of Encounters and The Map of Connections are attempts at a progressive, inclusive, and some how optimistic, cartography.

As for the Border getting lost, I am not sure it does. Although I certain got lost from it a few times. Several times I realised that, after half an hour, I was following the wrong hedgerow or ditch.

Desmond, your suggestion of adding place names to Map of Connections is something I am considering. Not to the photographs but perhaps to the map itself. I do want people to be able to engage with the map rapidly and not just find it puzzling. I like it that Helen found “attractive patterns emerging” but if that is the only level the work reached viewers then I may need to add traditional and ready-readable cartographical signs.

Thank you to everyone who commented.

Belfast Exhibition

If you’re in Belfast in the next couple of weeks you can see, painted on the walls of PS squared, two of my maps. We had an opening night on Thursday and I hope everybody had a good time. Instead of fancy finger food I prepared samples of my typical Border trekking provisions: mackerel sandwiches, cheap bourbon creams, and bananas. “There’s great energy in a banana,” an Armagh farmer said to me, while handing me a banana. The above photograph was taken from out on the street during the opening.

I painted the maps directly on the walls of the space. Please click through for a closer look. The Map of Connections 2.0:


The Map of Encounters 1.0:


Thank you to Peter, the curator of the space, for giving PS squared over to my work and for all his advice and encouragement.

PS squared, 18 Donegall Street, Belfast. Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 1 – 5pm. 14 – 16 October, 1 – 9pm. 18 October, 10am – 6pm.

Drawing Encounters

I will be showing The Map of Connections 2.0 and The Map of Encounters 1.0 in PS squared, Donegall Street, Belfast. The show opens on the 9th of October. I will be going in four days in advance to paint these versions of the maps on opposite walls of the gallery space. The Map of Connections is a strict diagram already laid-out and ready to be projected. The Map of Encounters is still in development and will probably continue to be so until just before the show opens. It has plenty of potential content, photographs, notes, my equipment, and the occasional souvenir. Peter, the curator of the space, is encouraging me to go in and let the creation of the map flow in a loose and instinctual way. That is not easy for me, loose is not my style, but I can see it may be a beneficial process.

In the last few days I have been producing images for The Map of Encounters. These are two examples. The farmer’s land abutted the most southern point of Northern Ireland. He pointed it out to me. Further west I was excited to see the buzzard, south of Slieve Beagh, as they are uncommon in Ireland.