Dreaming of a village (2023) is an installation comprised of sculptural, video and graphic elements. It is a quiet meditation on persistence, repetition, and endurance.

This work draws on research into historic land ownership in the townlands in the immediate vicinity of the artist’s home in rural County Down.

In the course of carrying out the research the artist discovered that an area opposite her house, which is now a tree plantation, had until at least the 1830s been farmland and supported numerous tenant farmers and their families. This ties in with local stories of a lost village in the townland. The farm buildings appear on the first Ordnance Survey map of the area from 1834 but are absent from subsequent maps.

The video and installation feature 70+ stones from the local area which have been used traditionally for both farm buildings and boundary walls. These stones have been wrapped in drawings on archival cotton showing the farm buildings still visible on the 1834 Ordnance Survey map. The video records the repeated acts of making necessary in producing the drawings and wrapping the stones, culminating in placing the stones in the outline of a cottage on the forest floor. The wrapped stones are presented in this formation set on plinths as part of the installation.