Lacuna is a new photographic and audio/visual installation in the Gallery of Photography evoking contemporary experiences in the border village of Pettigo, County Donegal. Flowing through the centre of the village the River Termon marks the physical border between County Donegal in the Republic of Ireland and County Fermanagh, in Northern Ireland.
Three bridges span the river – and at places where it narrows, often, without realising, you can step across into another country. Lacuna responds to the idea of the border as a ‘landless’ land or a cavity in understanding. Drawn to “in-between” places, artist Kate Nolan collaborated with the young people of Pettigo to explore the notion of the border as a place in flux. The exhibition weaves together still and moving images, recorded stories and a commissioned score by Gavin O’Brien to evoke the tangible and intangible, natural and constructed nature of the border. The diffusion of the physical border in recent years means that for young people there has been minimal impact on physical movement.
The prospect of the introduction of an international border between the EU and the UK with Brexit gives rise to new uncertainties about the future.
