Title: Import, 2006-2009, 96 x 264 inches total dimension (composed of 80 individual canvases 17 x 13.5 inches each), oil on canvas
Import is a single installation of 80 paintings of 80 people born in 80 different countries who came to make their home in Ireland. Conceived in 2005, a time of huge demographic change in this country, this piece was executed from 2006 to 2009 and was my personal response, as the son of an immigrant mother myself, to the rapidly changing face of Ireland at the time. Where I lived (near the mosque on South Circular Road) and where I worked (Dominick St, North Inner City) were two of the areas that underwent the most dramatic changes. In making these portraits, I made contact with and got to know a small but diverse group of these new faces and new personalities. I met each sitter in their home or place of work, interviewed them and then sat them for their portrait. From barmen to merchant bankers, chambermaids to CEOs, asylum seekers to surgeons, these 80 men, women and children were not just geographically divergent but economically, socially and religiously divergent too.