It's considered unlucky...

​

Medium

One found Hawthorn branch, cotton and sheepswool balls.

​

Year

2023

​

Dimensions

L 4.1 metres X W 1.1 metres x H 1 metre

 

Artist

Joanna Hopkins 

​

In Irish folklore, it is considered unlucky to cut down

a Hawthorn tree, or to bring a branch of one inside. Such is the pre occupation with myth and stories in Irish culture, that an entire motorway was diverted in Co Clare around a Hawthorn tree, also know as a lone 'fairy' bush, in 1999. If you messed with a fairy tree, it was said, you messed with the fairies.

 

Hawthorn trees form part of our ethnobotanic history. They have rooted a place in storytelling, influencing modern society with subtle nuances. They are associated with death, but also healing. By deliberately placing the unlucky branch in a gallery, can we rewild meaning back into our stories and culture? Can we re-create modern day myths?

​

The found hawthorn tree branch was found in a field, placed inside and is hung lengthways in a gallery space. It is dotted and pierced with sheepswool stuffed seeds, fruits, breasts and ovums, and is part of a larger body of the Artists work, investigating the correlations between the land and the female body, transposing myths and stories as folklore feminism. 
 

Cotton material is hand dyed with hawthorn leaves, blackberries, elderberries, briars, pine cones and bracken ferns.

​