Coumarin — Daniel Mooney Photography

Coumarin is an aromatic chemical used in perfumery, its smell reminiscent of freshly cut hay fields - a memory of my childhood. Hugh MacDiarmid, one of Scotland’s finest poets, speaks of it in ‘My Heart Always Goes Back to the North’ (1948). Whilst speaking in different terms, I read his depiction in relation to how I feel living in the city, whereby things dearest in my life can not be replicated here and I grow further from who I believe I am.

Coming from the country, city life is consuming. Desperate to reconnect and create, I travelled home seeking meaning. There is something especially significant about home, it is my place, with a certain magic. A magnitude of emotion sweeps over me when I return to the specific sites cherished memories were made. There is simply no place I have such belonging. I am probably the only one who knows these places exist - the scenes where my camera now records a time in the future. There is always distance though, even when I am home. Overgrown and recognisable to how I remember it, memories and attempting to recall them only damages them, altering the meaning of this place. Imaging these places turns them into an “instantaneous memento mori” (Mann, 2015 p. xiii).

I wanted to create tangible pieces of work, less fickle than a memory. To do so, the work combines multiple processes to create a multi-sensory experience for the viewer. The images are screen printed onto vinyl, adhered to plywood and then burnt with petrol. I chose this process both to aestheticise the fading of memory by almost destroying the images and due to the lingering acrid smell left by the petrol and plastic, engulfing the space they occupy, stenches I associate with the city.

I envisage this work to be exhibited in gallery spaces, this restriction also lends to the central ideas of the project. The selection entails a walk I often take at home to clear my head, as such the viewer would be led on this journey too around the space. The pieces (approx. 300mm x 300mm) are not meant to be intimate depictions of landscapes. Instead, I aim to disrupt the narrative and for the pieces to present themselves as damaged and almost unrecognisable environments: an entangled maelstrom of memory and disillusionment.

Much of my research has been into the processes themselves and studying the methods of those who have influenced the work, such as photographers, Sally Mann and Raymond Meeks and painters like Hamed Abdalla, Ferdinand Kulmer and Ku-lim Kim. I have also been absorbing lots of Scottish poetry which has also greatly influenced my construction of the landscapes, from poets like the aforementioned Hugh MacDiarmid. Given my own work is a personal reflection, however, I am more focused on the cultural and professional aspects as opposed to ethical and theoretical issues.