Beneath Our Feet: Art meets archaeology on North Main Street in Cork
Cork-based artist and archaeologist John Sunderland; right, a face made to decorate a ceramic jug found on the site.
Beneath Our Feet is an exhibition that celebrates the relationship between archaeology and art. Inspired by an excavation at 92-96 North Main St, Cork in the winter of 2021-22, it runs just five doors away, at St Peter’s, until October 4.
Beneath Our Feet is curated by the Cork-based artist and archaeologist John Sunderland, who worked on the dig for its six months’ duration, alongside project director Avril Purcell.
“Conditions were hard because they started building student accommodation on the site while we were excavating, and we were under a really tight deadline," he explains. "But we had a great team, we worked really well together. We found the remains of 12 wattle and timber medieval buildings. The wattle and timber survived because Cork, as you know, is built on an island in the middle of a river, and the water logging creates great preservation levels. You find wood artifacts and leather and all these kinds of remains."
Sunderland says that, when I was on site, he was immersed in dealing with the archaeology, but the artist's side of his brain was also kicking in. "I was constantly thinking, what would it be like to do some kind of art project on this?”
Sunderland, a native of Shropshire in the UK, holds an MA in Documentary Photography and completed a practice-based PhD in the visual interpretation of landscape change at the University of Northampton.
He maintains what he calls a “transdisciplinary” practice, and had done a similar project before, an artist residency on a community dig at Beaubec, Co Louth, that led to the exhibition Touching Time, at Drogheda Art Centre in 2022.
“I suggested to Ciara Brett, the city archaeologist, that we also do an exhibition on the dig at North Main St,” he says. “We secured funding from Creative Ireland and the Arts Council, and we went into partnership with City Council to present the exhibition at St Peter’s.
"North Main St has been running as a street for 800 years, and the people there probably don’t really clock that. When you’re walking down North Main St, you’ve got three metres of archaeology below you. I really wanted to communicate that, so I brought a very diverse group of artists together to work on the show.”
Sunderland’s own work in the exhibitions includes a series of six relief panels. “They feature some of the materials from the dig, pressed into clay and cast in plaster, with glass slumped into them to pick up all the details.”
He has also made drawings that use soils from the site as pigment. “That came from the process of sieving soil samples,” he says. “The soil is discarded, and the organic remains are preserved. I took the soil and created pigments and made drawings from them. I also created a palette that shows the colours of North Main Street.”
Sunderland’s wife, Penny Johnston, an archaeobotanist he met "on a bog in Tipperary" in 1997, also features in the show, along with Eva Kourela, an entomologist (insect specialist); Matt Durran, a glass and ceramics artist; and Sara Baume, an author and visual artist.
Johnston’s work includes a series of plants pressed on to watercolour paper, each representing the seeds she identified on site at 92-96 North Main St, along with texts that explain how the plants were used in the past. Similarly, Corella’s drawings focus on the insects discovered on the dig, while Durran’s 3D glass sculptures in black glass and porcelain reflect on his impressions of the site.
“Sara’s made a huge altarpiece for the show,” says Sunderland. “It has all these panels presenting narratives she’s picked up from the site and from doing a lot of research into medieval manuscripts and the way they’re annotated.”
The Beneath Our Feet exhibition does not feature any artifacts from the site, largely for security reasons, says Sunderland. “Instead, we’re showing the archaeology by combining the site drawings with photographs and text. We have some really nice photographs, including one of a face mask that was one of the last finds on site. It’s a tiny 12th century figure that was used to decorate a vessel."
There is also an oral history component in the show, with recordings of the specialists involved in the excavation. The exhibition will also feature a number of talks by the participating artists and a number of archaeologists.
After its run at St Peter’s, the Beneath Our Feet exhibition will be archived as part of the Folklore Project. “I’d like it to have a bit more life,” says Sunderland, “though I’m not sure yet how that is going to manifest itself.”
He is already planning his next art project. “I’ll have a solo show in Sweden next year. It will be all about elk. One of the state broadcasters does a live stream of the elk migration every year, and millions of people watch it. I find that fascinating. You have hunters who go out and shoot elk, but there are also elk parks that are run as tourist attractions.
"I’m hoping to set up some sort of residency where I can go and photograph elk, and I can get the elk to photograph themselves using trail cameras. What I’m trying to do is look at the way we understand these animals. It’s a bit of experimentation, really.”
- Beneath Our Feet runs at St Peter’s, North Main St, Cork until October 4. See johnsunderland.com and stpeterscork.ie.
