Rural Fluorescent

Rural Fluorescent explores the use of high-visibility materials in rural Ireland, intensely colourful or reflective materials that have become an increasingly common aspect of the visual landscape of the countryside. The use of high-vis materials is unusual in that it is at once both an aspect of material culture in the rural environment for which the least concern for the aesthetic is displayed – that is, its visual impact is purely for the practical purpose of being visible for safety reasons – while at the same time being visually vibrant and striking. As conveyors of information, it seems that their aesthetic impact is almost a side-effect. This project aims to re-articulate these fluorescent and reflective materials, by exploring their use in the environment and emphasising their impact through staged and documentary images using flash photography. It plays with the visual properties of these materials in the practical spaces of the everyday working rural environment, and explores the relative frivolity of re-contextualising both through art.