"Cullivan's show provides a worthy, imaginative response to a moment of quiet historical change."

Aidan Dunne, The Irish Times

A Staggering Ten Million

Co. Leitrim
September 2006-February 2007

A Staggering Ten Million was produced during a six month residency at the Leitrim Sculpture Center. This body of work consists of a 7 minute video piece, a series of 12 photographs, a 20 minute audio recording and a collection of quotations.

The project was both a response to and document of rapid development in rural Ireland. Abandoned homesteads, the focal point of the project, became a symbol of the changing times, old ways in decline, communities dispelled, of a past being deserted and a present obsessed with progress and financial gain.

Following hand-drawn maps and verbal directions from locals, the spaces were documented while they still stood and held memory. A series of photographs reveals objects left to rot or gather dust; beds still made up; the pages of a book curling with damp; a swallow's nest dangling off a lampshade; walls richly stained by moisture and moss.

An accompanying video piece provides a time-based response to these spaces. Unmoving and silent, save for the slight patter of rain or echo of children at play, each space gradually reveals a sense of its own atmosphere and history.

Conversations and more formal interviews with locals, young and old, are captured in audio and text form, relaying attitudes toward the past, religion, progress, housing, community, money and the future.

Watch an interview about this project on RTÉ's Nationwide

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