UCD artists in residence in RHA exhibition about bogs

Artists (opens in a new window)Fiona McDonald and (opens in a new window)Siobhan McDonald are connected to UCD through the(opens in a new window) Parity Studios artists in residence programme. Both Fiona and Siobhan have work in the BogSkin exhibition currently running at the Royal Hibernian Academy.

(opens in a new window)BogSkin is a major exhibition examining the relationship of art to the boglands of Ireland over the past 50 years, curated by RHA Director, Patrick T Murphy. The exhibition features artists from the 1970s up to present day artists, exploring landscape, bogs as the site of ritual and mythology, bog as fuel source and its industrial heritage, its cultural meaning and its role in climate change mitigation and ecological recovery. The exhibition is open now and will run to 20 April 2025.

Bogs play a huge role in the climate crisis. When healthy, they store huge amounts of carbon and can sequester carbon from the air. However, when degraded, as many are in Ireland and elsewhere, they become carbon emitters. Restoration and management of bogs is essential to mitigating climate change.

Addressing these issues, Fiona McDonald has been working in Parity Studios over the past few months finalising her installation for the exhibition. During her time at Parity’s new home in Richview, Fiona worked with staff from the School of Agriculture and Food Science on sustaining sphagnum moss which she has incorporated into her sculpture We Share the Same Air [1.1] which features in BogSkin.

Fiona McDonald - We Share the Same Air [1.1]. Image credit: Mark Anderson

Fiona McDonald - We Share the Same Air [1.1]. Image credit: Mark Anderson

We Share the Same Air [1.1] is a living, automated sculpture that intricately weaves organic ecosystems, robotic processes, and environmental data into a shared cycle of breath and exchange. The work interrogates the intersections of life, technology, and atmosphere, exploring how human presence, natural processes, and machines are entangled. 

The installation comprises three transparent chambers arranged in a circle. Two chambers host living sphagnum moss ecosystems, while the third holds bare peat, representing a degraded bog. These ecosystems are alive, dynamic, and constantly exchanging gases with the air around them. Healthy sphagnum moss sequesters CO2 during photosynthesis, while bare peat emits carbon dioxide. 

We Share the Same Air [1.1]  invites us to experience air not as an abstract resource but as a tangible medium of connection. The atmosphere inside the gallery becomes a shared surface, a living network that binds human breath, moss photosynthesis, and machine logic. It is a reminder that our bodies and actions are inseparable from the ecosystems we inhabit, each breath becoming part of an infinite, collective exchange.

At the center of the installation is an automated arm that circles endlessly, opening and sealing each chamber in turn. Each time it seals a chamber, a CO2 sensor embedded in its lid captures the atmospheric changes within. In the sphagnum chambers, the sensor records a drop in CO2 as photosynthesis occurs, while in the bare peat chamber, it measures an increase in CO2, reflecting the emissions of degraded peatlands. These readings turn the imperceptible breathing of the ecosystems into visible, data-driven feedback.

Sphagnum moss in Rosemount Environmental Research Station

Sphagnum moss is central to bogs’ capacity to sequester carbon. For the work, Fiona got some culture sphagnum, or plugs, being used for restoration, from Bord na Mona. She was concerned about how to keep the moss alive for the duration of the exhibition and while at UCD sought advice from Noeleen Smyth in Horticulture. 

Fiona says, “Noeleen stored some in her lab and we also brought some to Rosemount where Gordon and David used their expertise to help plant the samples in peat soil. We left them in the greenhouse over Christmas where they thrived”. 

Noeleen says it was a unique request.  “The challenge was to keep these artificially propagated sphagnum samples alive and thriving until Fiona's exhibition. We tried a few different techniques using the growth chamber in the lab and the heated propagation bench in Rosemount. The aim was to give them enough heat to keep growing but not too much to cause them any stress and also to keep them humid as  they don't tolerate drying out at all. We were delighted with how well they grew and thrived from the treatments applied! It was wonderful to work with Fiona on this.  Horticulture is defined as science and art and this is a great example of how this can happen”.

Experimenting with moss  

Noeleen Smyth and Gordon Kavanagh at Rosemount.

Siobhan McDonald, associate artist at Parity Studios also has work in BogSkin with a number of artworks including In the Valley of Tears (2025) which also contains sphagnum moss and peat. This piece explores the relationship between bogs and their natural preservative properties, drawing on the Faddan More Psalter—a 1,300-year-old book of Psalms unearthed from a Tipperary bog in 2006. It contains Hebrew prayers and poems. The bog’s anaerobic environment preserved sections of the book while leaving voids untouched by time. The paradox of presence and absence is central to the work: the iron gall ink in the Psalter acted as a preservative, allowing individual letters to survive, suspended in the organic material. Material traces of fragments speak as much to the passage of time as the surviving text itself, highlighting the delicate balance of nature and memory. 

In the Valley of Tears, Siobhan McDonald (2025)