EDGE

This body of work is a personal response that bears witness to the experiences of people seeking asylum being forced into homelessness by a lack of State policy. It’s also a record of the hostile architecture of the barriers that were installed throughout 2024 along Dublin’s Grand Canal and nearby areas in an attempt to deter those people from sleeping there.  These semi-abstracted images are intended to convey a sense of the often traumatic experiences of the men as they made their way to Ireland and after they arrived, where they were met with the opposite of what they most needed - protection. The works are not documentary images - not least because conventional documentary photographs could cause these unprotected men to be identified online and further expose them to danger. Under European law it’s illegal to photograph people seeking asylum without their permission - they have more rights to privacy than citizens as they are deemed more vulnerable.

The barriers were a shameful, heavy-handed initiative, supposedly put in place to protect the canal and its amenities from the homeless men. Instead, they became a physical manifestation of the unspoken policy of placing  the men outside the protection of the State - keeping them on the edge, not allowing them to come in from the cold.

This work 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.