Etching on black paper

Signed and titled in pencil

Numbered from the edition of 50

Image and paper size: 380 x 285 mm

Niamh worked with Ed Prichard on the Common Place project.

Niamh: My first conversation with Ed started with our introductions and sharing stories about our backgrounds, it soon came to light that we were both searching for a sense of home.

For some home is a place, for others it's a feeling, and for me it's a mixture of the two: my own permanent base which will allow me to be who I am and create an environment that reflects me and makes me feel comfortable.

In my early teens I collected images from The Sunday Times Magazine of interior designs, and I thought where better to start this project than with these images which I'd saved of my dream home and the home that I was chasing for all these years, to create a room which doesn't exist in reality.  I was quite happy for details to be lost in the etching process as they would be in a memory over time. 

 

 

Ed: Home should be a place that empowers you and fills you up and sets you free, that's what I'm looking for. 

Hiraeth, by Ed Prichard

Lost

in the

dark wood:

ravens have stolen

the breadcrumbs

tangled red threads

criss-cross the labyrinth

of past lives and places

I once called home

leading me in diminishing

circles - there is no way back

I must pause here: stand still

let my roots probe beneath

the leafmeal into the

darkly-nurturing earth

blindly seeking

 something

that may

or may

not

be

home

*Hiraeth [Welsh, Celtic origin] Multi-layered word with no direct English translation. Roughly translates as homesickness, overlaid with a deep nostalgia or yearning for a home that you cannot return to, that no longer exists, or perhaps never was.