Unsustainable | Myfanwy Frost-Jones

Myfanwy Frost-Jones has a research-based practice investigating themes of colonization, sustainability and ecology, based on the Beara Penninsula and Kenmare Bay. She is the recipient of the 2022 Backwater Moving Image Bursary and has won a number of awards for her video work including the RDS Mason Hayes & Curran LLP Centre Culturel Irlandais Residency Award at the 2022 RDS Visual Arts Awards, the inaugural Graduate Artists Bursary at the 2023 Cork International Film Festival and the MTU Registrars Prize and solo exhibition. Her work has been shown on the largest non-commercial outdoor screen in Europe as part of the Living Canvas screening programme in Dublin and as part of the IndieCork Festival. Her graduation work was selected as part of the Mata Irlandia – Ireland’s Eye Exhibition on show in the World Trade Centre, Jakarta, Indonesia.

Unsustainable is her new work, a 2-screen video and audio piece bringing together the empty landscape of the west of Ireland with current ecological issues and past histories of mono crop farming and famine. Voices from the past (of imperial land agents, the early tourists, local administrators and famine aid workers), are layered together, with moments of clarity, to reflect the multitude of different opinions and viewpoints – whilst also reflecting the silence forced upon women and workers by the culture of that time. The ambiguous, speechless sound of female lament runs through the piece as past, present and future crises of food production and sustainability are put into context with the Irish landscape and our current environmental crisis and factory farming, to reflect on the change of direction needed before a dystopian future of famine and pollution occurs again. Future conditions are still very much conjecture and there is no consensus even in the environmental science sector, yet the piece reflects the broad agreement that agriculture and food production methods need to change, that they have become unsustainable.

Myfanwy is the recipient of the Backwater Moving Image Bursary. The Bursary is awarded to a graduating moving image artist from MTU Crawford College of Art & Design, who demonstrates talent and ambition in their work practice. It provides the graduate with a studio at Backwater for 6 months, training from Cork Film Centre, mentorship from an appointed moving image professional and access to the audio-visual equipment at Backwater. The Bursary is in collaboration with Cork Film Centre and MTU Crawford College of Art & Design.