EDGE

This body of work is a personal response that bears witness to the experiences of people seeking asylum being forced into homelessness by State policy. It was made in the hope that we may more readily offer welcome, protection, and dignity to those most in need.

An excerpt from the catalogue essay Necessary Journeys by Ken Grant:

“In Conor Horgan’s photographs, tarpaulin and tents become a creased sea at the foot of the Virgin in a Dublin park. Repetitive, tethered, government-issued, they’re photographed as if almost lost in the ink of half-light, speaking of the many, without the folly or indignity that can so often occur with a heavier hand. In the confusion of night, an air-starved stain of grass after a tent’s removal becomes a footprint left after a clearance, and the fencing which first compelled Horgan to begin this work seems heartless, relentless and functional. There are no faces here – the tents are enough to confirm limbo and caution of more to come. In twilit refinement, Horgan conveys massed and sudden rootlessness in contemporary Ireland with tenderness, craft and, as if there could be anything else, anger. “

Sixteen works from the series were first seen in A R C H I P E L A G O in the Royal Hibernian Academy. Curated by Davey Moor, this was a major exhibition of Irish photography in the main gallery, featuring seventeen artists whose practice spans the myriad of themes that concern lens-based culture of the country’s photographers today. The Irish Times named it as one of the top ten exhibitions of 2025.

Two works from the series were shown in Rua Red South Dublin Art Centre’s Annual Open Exhibition Right Here, Right Now (2025). It was one of fifteen short-listed projects from over 700 worldwide submissions to Photo Museum Ireland’s inaugural International Open Awards Reflecting the Real (2025). The work also featured in a 10 page portfolio in Source Photographic Review (2026). One of the works is in the Office of Public Works State Art Collection.