Máirín Grant

Ireland

The installation is based on a ship’s log of fisherman Joefy Murphy, now skipper of the Dunmore East lifeboat. Joefy kept a ship’s log for each day of the year, in which he recorded the weather. He also recorded quotas, the catch, other fishing boats and sometimes their catch, the crewmembers, and damages and repairs to his boats. The logs are a fascinating historical document and are a record of a tradition that was a major contribution to the Irish economy during the boom years of the fishing industry. Grant borrowed the log from 1985, when Joefy fished out of Dunmore East with his brothers John and Nicko, between them fishing eight boats. The title Sea Area Forecast conveys the importance of the forecast to the working life and safety of fishermen.

The original documents were rough and ready compared to today’s computer read-outs. Grant has transcribed the original hand-written records – one for each day of the year – onto tissue paper, and the tissues are suspended from threads. A sound recording of a trawler at sea, including sounds of waves, gulls, fishermen shouting, clanking machinery and the throbbing of a trawler engine, accompanies the work.

(Text: give(a)way catalogue, 2006)