‘Peat show’ is a multimedia video performance piece. It incorporates a handmade structure, historically known as the “Box of the World”. Sarraj remembers it, from her Palestinian upbringing, as a primitive form of visual storytelling.
The box consists of three front-facing panels, each with a personal viewpoint, from which the viewer can peer into a miniature theatre-like domain, spying abstract, moving, panoramic paintings.
The pigment used in composing the artwork has been extracted from peat. It is essentially ground up turf. Turf is a readily available, yet a highly exploited non-renewable source of fuel in Ireland.
The use of turf pigment within the handmade box represents a dual relationship between nature and technology, time and space, history and tradition. The intimate form of the vessel reflects what can be kept, seen or unseen from a personal collective memory. The piece questions, is it possible to view something in the absence of screen-based media anymore?
Peat Show on tour
From an exhibition at Pickering Forest
From a live Performance
Turf on canvas
Peat Show on tour
From an exhibition at Pickering Forest
Research
The making of
Turf on canvas
From a live Performance
