Ruth’s desire to tell the stories not yet told through her photography

The exhibition is a pictorial record of her journey as she travels across the border 'Between North and South' from her home to her place of work and back again. Here she tells The Impartial Reporter about the inspiration behind her photography, her biggest influences and what her photography means to her.

JC: What is your artistic background?

RGM: At school, I got A’s in History and Appreciation of Art and English, which I put down to growing up without a TV. Books offered the only escape and images were windows to other places, people and fascinating realities. Apart form that ‘Art’ growing up was very much regarded as superfluous to life. When it came to making a college/career choice my heart said Art History at Trinity and my head and other driving forces said something that would lead to a job and so Social and Community Work in Bradford it was. From Fermanagh to the burning of Salmon Rushdie’s book, poll tax riots and a vibrant multi-ethnic city, it certainly was a formative experience. I pursued social and community work, which has been ‘my bread and butter’ now for many years, and it is only in more recent years I have taken my creative interests further. So despite my age I am a young artist!

That said, I was bringing creativity into community work, using collage, photography and film in research work, bringing artists into area-based regeneration work and designing participatory action research projects using photography. After writing a thesis about gender and cultural identity I sat down with the film-maker Anne Crilly and we wrote a treatment for a documentary film, so at that point I was starting to think more visually. I’d had an ‘ah-ha’ moment one day walking across Derry’s Diamond when I saw a group of women disembark from a bus and go into Austin’s store. It was an everyday scene but I knew instantly ‘by the women's dress’ it was a WI group or a Mother’s Union in the city for the day; there was an out of 'place-ness' about them and yet I instantly warmed on sight of them and I wanted to capture the scene. What happened in that moment was an instance of self-recognition and I realised something about the validation role of visual imagery and art.

My photographic technical skills are self-taught and the basics I picked up as teenager. It wasn’t until I moved to Belfast and went freelance in work that I picked a camera up with more earnest, using it initially to see the place where I was living, the streets of Belfast. That took me back to college to the University of Ulster where I undertook a recently established photography degree programme and was fortunate to learn from lecturer-photographers, many of whom have shaped ‘Northern Irish photography’ and an impressive host of international photographers. It was also great fun being back in class with digitally savvy 20 year olds, who were my real teachers when it came to Photoshop.

JC: What inspires your photography?

RGM: Typical of others growing up in Northern Ireland in the 70’s and 80’s, questions of identity and representation engage me. I am also interested in the material culture of religion and the aesthetic of faith groups where there is little material culture. I am interested in the ‘Northern Irish oeuvre’ although reportage images, TV, newspaper and photographic archive images have, by and large, represented male views. I am interested in the gaps yet to be filled in, what else has yet to be said, shown and documented about this place. I also draw on my own life, cultural and faith dimensions to my life and gendered perspectives and bring that to my art photography.

I am inspired by the everyday, ordinary people, and the where and how macro political matters show up in the local. Nature and the environment also have a strong pull although I am still figuring out how to engage with that beyond making the classic Fermanagh sunset or swan scene. Other photographers and visual artists inspire me and I continue to learn from peers and emerging artists.

JC: Who are your biggest influences?

RGM: The documentary photographer Derek Speirs, in the 70’s and 80’s documented the Irish Travellers and what stands out for me in his black and white images is a non-judgemental approach which I try to carry into my work. Mary McIntyre’s work emphasis on ‘the viewing point adopted’ in the image has also influenced me as well as her work.

JC: What has been your most ambitious project to date?

RGM: 'Ordinances and Angels' has been the most ambitious project. It is a set of 21 images of women dressed in ‘Sunday best’ and photographed in a prayerful pose. Three images were shown in my 2014 graduation show, five images were shown here in the Visual Arts Open in the Higher Bridges Gallery in 2016 and it has also been showed internationally in Portugal and China. This work won the RDS Taylor Arts Award in 2014 which was a great honour, and I was delighted to have made the first ‘stills image’ to win the RDS Taylor Art Award.

‘Ordinances and Angels’ is about dress codes and worship practice informed by faith beliefs. As a body of work it is a document to a dress sensibility within the evangelical Christian tradition in Northern Ireland and especially of rural Ulster. My photography approach engages directly with biblically informed beliefs, and in doing so I render sitters anonymous and the work reveals something about ‘the spiritual moment’. Viewed as a group of images it tells the viewer something about individuality and collectivism.

JC: Can you tell me about your current exhibition in Belcoo and what the subject matter means to you?

RGM: The work ‘Between North and South’ is a work in progress. Three things to say relevant to the making of the work: the first thing is I had been wanting to come home for a while, secondly by the time I returned home we had had the Brexit Referendum and the third thing is on returning home I took a job ‘over the border,’ becoming one of the many thousands of ‘frontier workers’. The word ‘frontier’ is a misfit word today when so many people cross everyday and yet even with a more or less invisible border, there are different cultural ways of being, there are older pre-partition divisions, and one of the questions floating about for me is if for people living along the border and crossing the border frequently there is a between north and south place or a between north and south people?

My own additional contradiction is by growing up in the protestant unionist community in Fermanagh I didn’t ‘cross the Border’ except a couple of times a year to visit relatives in Leitrim and for the beach in Donegal. Earlier violent border campaigns were a part of living memory, informing the psyche and instructing you as to where you might go or might live. There has been plenty of journeying since and I have undertaken a lot of work in Border counties so I am not exactly a stranger to Border areas or the south these days, nevertheless Border crossings and journeys were now to be an everyday occurrence. And starting out and having come from living in Belfast, I was mindful whilst many people cross the border these days, many others don’t. Without much more thought, I started to document the trips.

The work might fit into a ‘road trip genre’ except road trips usually are all about discovery. These everyday journeys are ones of discovery, but there is also familiarity, delight, repetition and tedium. Journey time is where I started to make sense of ‘being back home’ and where I become aware my own sense of belonging and identity is percolating once again. Of course turning on the car radio with its airwaves soon jammed with “B” talk, its not surprising that Brexit collapses into my view. The work raises questions about what is and isn’t in-flux in this rural peripheral place in relation to our social political dynamics. However the work in its entirety isn’t directly about Brexit. It is about ‘journeying,’ what ‘we clock’ as we go and what we perceive as we journey.

JC: What does your photography mean to you?

RGM: Having grown up with few art influences bar inspirational art teachers, school including trips and borrowed book, I have arrived in a place today where I think art might be all that really matters!