Declan McCourt

I collect ‘data’, letting it come through in gentle marks, scoring the paper and constructing a new world. Memories, colours, sounds, and energies are the data I collect.  Through them, I explore how we perceive and experience sound, sight, and touch; how we visual the intangible and what senses we rely on to describe or interpret a memory or experience. Drawing facilitates this research as I document these through line, tone, and layering on paper and in the physical world through sculpture and installation. Through this, I begin collating my own visual language that creates a visual diary of past experiences, from conversations with friends, favourite songs, heartbreak, small talk and a friend’s laughter. The marks and scores on the paper can then be read or interpreted to tell a story or dialogue. Lines and marks talk to one another and create their own world. Figures, objects, and words from my observations find themselves embedded in the drawings, as reminders of time and the people and places which the marks speak for. By translating the ephemeral into something tactile, it enables perceptions to be constructed and visualises experiences – whether personal or collective. 

These worlds are based off existing places and my imagination, creating a sensory dreamscape that can be seen and potentially re-heard through the instruments I have made.