A Special Area of ConVersation, Mary Conroy and Joanna Hopkins

A Special Area of ConVersation is a publication resulting from an artist residency sited on the Fingal Coast in Co. Dublin in 2019. The residency was part of 'An Urgent Inquiry' project through Fingal County Council’s participation in the Invitation to Collaboration award. 

A Special Area of ConVersation was developed to draw attention to the impacts of climate change on the biodiversity on the Fingal coast and conservation efforts being carried out in the Fingal area for both humans and non-humans. Representing a combination of both fact and fiction, the work stands on the border of the present and the past, of human and other. The project outcomes - a temporary installation, handmade sand and clay eggs, a live performance, and this final book - were created to highlight the existence, fragility and importance of all the creatures who call the Fingal coastline ‘home’.

The publication is a result of a collaborative effort between Mary Conroy and Joanna Hopkins to document the cause and effect of habitat loss and climate change on the Fingal Coastline. The work serves as a permanent record of a moment in time of a site that is disappearing at an alarming rate due to costal erosion. The site on which the performance was held has already been washed away, some of the residential gardens and houses seen in parts of this publication have already begun to succumb to the sea and, more than likely, will not be there in 10 years’ time.