Persisting on The Peripheries - Moreen
Throughout the late 90s and early 2000s, Ireland experienced the Celtic Tiger, a period of excessive economic growth fuelled by our neoliberal political systems. During this time there was an unprecedented amount of privatised construction happening throughout the country. Dublin’s infrastructure was rapidly expanding to provide for the growing suburbs, as they became a utopian haven for many of the new middle and upper classes of Irish society. With seemingly never-ending ongoing construction for over a decade, these sites became alternative playgrounds of exploration and wonder to myself and many other children growing up during this era.
Moreen Blackthorn Estate was a state-funded construction project in the 1960s made to provide social housing to a growing demographic of families who settled in suburban areas such as Sandyford. The 1930s to 1960s saw a glimpse of what could have been promising social housing in the Republic of Ireland but, ever since the 1970s, Ireland's social housing sector has sharply declined as it began to contract. The right-to-buy scheme at this time meant my Dad was able to put down a mortgage on a corner house with a garage in Moreen Estate. This gave my parents an opportunity to own the property that has been our family home for over 25 years. I’ve always experienced a strong sense of neighbourhood spirit in Moreen. But as a child what I had thought of as a normal community dynamic in most estates, I now fear is being lost amongst numerous pockets of Dublin’s landscape and eventually my own.
Graphic by Faye Dolan
This sense of spirit of Moreen is conjured in the ‘green,’ with various shops and clubs becoming neighbourhood gathering spaces. Since 1976, generations of families have passed down the tradition of playing and coaching for St. Mary’s Football Club. Without St. Mary's Club House, many pivotal community gatherings and decisions would not happen in such a cohesive or inclusive manner. The Balally Centre directly opposite Moreen consists of a small number of retail units, takeaways, a pharmacy and a local pub. While it appears run down and meagre in comparison to its neighbouring Dundrum Town Centre and The Beacon South Quarter, it has still remained a thriving epicentre for the community for over 30 years. The Romayo’s chipper and Shan Shuey House TakeAway are particular staples of a Friday night, as local residents fill these spots ordering their usuals and having a catch-up. Tonys is a small corner shop in a repurposed garage, and has remained a peculiar but cherished place in the estate. It supplied an endless amount of entertainment to us kids growing up, begging our mam’s for a euro bag of jellies. When that was unsuccessful we’d group together and set out to wash cars in the hope to stash up on sweets and chalk cigarettes for dens that we built with scrap material salvaged from the surrounding area. Without these humble feats of constantly-evolving architecture, the fabric and essence of this place Moreen wouldn’t be quite the same as it is today.
In the last twenty years, despite the strong sense of community that continues to persist, Moreen Estate has been increasingly encroached on by infrastructure and private development leaving its mark on our landscape. During the Celtic Tiger, The Sandyford Industrial Estate besides Moreen became obsolete. Simultaneously an influx of foreign corporations were looking to relocate or establish themselves in suburban areas of the Irish landscape. In the early 2000s, a large concrete obtrusive wall was erected around the periphery of the estate. It became a barrier to buffer Moreen from the expansion of the M50, surrounding the outskirts of Dublin city. In 2004, development began on the new Beacon South Quarter (BSQ) in the previous industrial estate. This was to be a monumental build for the southern suburbs of Sandyford, comprising a private hospital, hotel, numerous retail units, apartments and office complexes.
Photo by Grace O’Leary
During this modern build, a section of Moreen Estate was sold by the council to Tivway Ltd., a construction company which later went into liquidation. They erected a wall that divided the field behind St. Mary’s Football Club, where residents would play and run dogs. This portion of land was then used to store machinery and equipment for the construction of the neighbouring BSQ. At the time rumours suggested that this site was to eventually become a car park, providing for the influx of commuters to the area. Either due to objections by residents or the recession in 2008, these rumours never came to light, so construction ceased across the new Sandyford Business District as well as the remainder of the country.
The land was left to stagnate for fourteen years. During that time, machinery and equipment were eventually removed although large mounds of granite bedrock are still embedded into the landscape to this day, sitting there like undulating hills. Throughout my teenage years, these forgotten and neglected spaces became perverse playgrounds to roam free from the watchful eyes of society and the ever-expanding surveillance of our cities. Yet at a young age, they also functioned quite literally and figuratively as concrete sites of interest, where I would come to terms with understanding the political structures that become manifest through the architecture of our cities, which control, exclude and exploit certain demographics and minorities from ‘their’ imposed utopian ideal of the future. What was once a field belonging to a community had now become an urban void lingering between two realms, a false utopian future and a neglected dystopian present.
Over the years many teenagers and kids have managed to gain access to this void through gaps in the fencing or directly over the wall. Reclaiming their sense of place as they continue to play in the rubble of past failures; collecting trolleys, pallets, and waste materials to construct large bonfires. Inside, the walls are covered in graffiti and tags. A deliberately neglected and hidden pocket of the landscape can become a place where creativity and a sense of freedom have the ability to be expressed in their rawest form.
When I wander inside the void I often get lost here for hours, on a bright summer's day grasses, shrubbery and dandelions glisten and glow reclaiming their place through gaps in the fencing that surrounds this haunted site. Neighbours cats can be seen escaping into the void basking in their own urban wilderness. A glimpse at past memories of my own childhood arise while simultaneously the atmosphere conjures a sense of hope into the future.
But this idyllic wilding space also attracts illicit activity. Land which now has the potential to become a haven for native species is further destroyed by bags of trash and unwanted objects that are often flung over the wall. The bonfires, mesmerising and beautiful in their own defiant way, are damaging to the earth and other nonhuman species who have made their home here as toxins fume into the air.
Photo by Grace O’Leary
If we can trace a line to where the neglect of this landscape begins, is it possible for accountability to be taken, so an alternative world can be imagined in the present?
The search for atonement doesn’t start far. The Beacon Hotel, with its rotting wooden facade and broken lights that now read: THE __ACON, glaringly impossible to ignore in the void of night. The state of a conception which was to be a ‘Beacon’ to an area existing along the outskirts of the city is now almost too painfully ironic to fathom. Funnily, ‘Lonely’ by Akon comes to mind as I’m reminded of the empty retail units left untouched for years. With thick layers of dust gathering on their glass doors as the evening sun casts an eerie glow, illuminating the lonely spaces from within. Let’s not forget about the Sentinel Building, a 14-storey skeletal structure that has been left unfinished for well over a decade. It is now double-neglected by 24/7 surveillance; it silently sits watching a landscape in dystopic demise, while we continue on with our daily lives, ignorantly passing it by.
The promise of a false utopian future fuelled by our neoliberal political systems has conjured a lasting haunting of our landscape, as the presence of ghost estates still linger in the thousands of properties boarded up around the country left in a state of neglect for potential economic gain. The hopeful hoardings of the early 2000s that lined The BSQ, with images of smiling families and enticing shop fronts are now replaced by sombre hoardings promising “COMMUNITIES FOR THE FUTURE” (IRES Reits). But like we have witnessed before these ‘temporarily’ deceiving hoardings pave the way for the implantation of extortionately priced property, that forces a growing demographic of the population into houseless situations. These hoardings should truthfully read “NO COMMUNITIES FOR THE FUTURE - IRES Reits”.
As the price of property now skyrockets in Moreen and realtor slips slide through our front doors on a daily basis, I wonder what will eventually come of this place. The pebble-dashed facades, an iconic emblem of working-class culture will one day become home to the struggling generation of upper-middle-class families trying to find their footing in an extortionate market. While the real working class who these social housing builds were originally made for will be pushed further again to the outskirts and edges of society.
At this precarious time in my life, I wanted to create a portrait exploring my sense of identity which is intricately interlaced with this place I know as home. Through an accidental occurrence of double exposures, a truer portrait of ‘Moreen’ emerged, laid out the resulting images begin to blend into one another, mimicking the embodied experience of being in the landscape. Where past memories merge with the present - anxieties, hope, estrangement and a sense of belonging are entangled and embedded in the surroundings that I have grown a part of.
Photo by Grace O’Leary
“Someone <3’s someone” is written in the concrete of the pavement, overlaid with the pit of a bonfire marking its presence on the landscape in a black ashy blob. Standing trolleys from the local Supervalu set against fire strewn on the ground. My recently passed dog, Logan, accompanies me investigating the site before us, connected by the extension of his lead through the peripherals of the photograph. Obtrusive sharp fencing leads us along the layered landscape as it merges with temporary construction barriers. Burn marks of fire and graffiti stating ‘MBlock’ overlay, as boulders and rocks from the neighbouring industrial estate carry traces of light and shadows blending into obsolete warehouses and neglected car parks.
Photo by Grace O’Leary
The final images in this undulating series softly take the viewer into a more intimate space, where my bedsheets are hung in a soft evening glow, floating in with waves as they return to shore, a merging of two places both symbolic of home. ‘Fenit' /Án Fhianait a small fishing village along the coast of Kerry - translating to ‘wild place’, where these original images of the sea were taken, recalls stories of my mom's childhood. Explorations in an idyllic rural landscape collide with an unfamiliar environment yet both find similarity in their own differing states of wildness.
The ghost of my moms' childhood home gently merges with my own at a time when I’m reminded that I, too, can’t stay here forever. Past memories embedded in the landscape, blend into and act upon the next, we carry them with us and pass them on as we travel further exploring alternate places that continue to shape us while we, in turn, shape them.