"BÓTHAR BUÍ" Exhibition

Noreile Breen is an architect, in all the senses of that name. In this exhibition, which attempts not only to document, but also to uncover, the architecture of Robin Walker’s Bótharbuí, she uses all the investigative and representational tools of the architect. Measured drawing, line sketches, photography, scans, mapping – all are employed in digging for the truth of this sublime work of architecture. Then they are brought together, at large scale, in the magnificent room of the gallery, in an act of transponding some of the essence of that site.

Bótharbuí is not conceived as an objective, geometric composition, but as a happening, a confluence of physical and perceptual phenomena. It represents a multiplicity of microcosms, each one with its own distinct, topological attributes. Any single spatial understanding is broken down into a sequence of different autonomous structures and rooms, organized according to variable positions within the terrain. The house seeds itself into the site, in a complex topological organization of six separate buildings, located around pathways, terraces, trees and ancient enclosures. While this horizontal layout is modern in kind, intensifying the active presence, maintaining an implicit, active relationship with the physical environment, it is overlaid by a commemorative layout, represented by the original cottage and stone sheds. Bótharbuí has been described as an almost “mythical” place, partly in the sense that it also refers to the macrocosm, because it is infinite. Without meaning to ascribe to any doctrine, whether God or Allah, or indeed Nature itself, this term helps to explain what is meant by “an architecture that can’t be drawn”. The 16th century conflict between Eastern and Western methods of representation in painting embodies the difference between how Allah sees things and how things really are.

If the Western method derives from an actual viewpoint, which involves the technique of perspective, then that ultimately leads to an image, or a depiction, which can be described as “picturesque”. But Bótharbuí cannot be adequately understood by the picturesque. Allah sees things all together, from above, in a cosmic, not a perspective view. That is how Noreile Breen is attempting to render Bótharbuí – in mapping the pathways and flagstones which lead from one building to another, in taking large format photographs of the impossible detail of trees and plants, in photographing the shadows cast on walls which act like blank sheets of paper held up against the landscape.