Borderlands is part of In Flux, a collective exhibition focused on several themes including the physical documentations of the borders and landscape of Europe, the complex relationship between east and west, moments of protest and resistance, and migration and the refugee crisis. The exhibition In Flux was conceived in response to the Greek crisis and opened in the summer of 2015 in the midst of the worst refugee crisis to grip Europe since the Second World War. The exhibition aimed to highlight the fluid and transitional nature of contemporary society, and the current state of flux. The year that followed saw the refugee crisis escalate and the unforeseen referendum in which Britain voted to leave the European Union. In 2017 we are still in a state of flux, and it’s time again to take stock and ask, what is the prevailing state of the EU?

Nigel Swann was born in the Northern Irish border county of Armagh in 1962 and has lived in the Southern Irish border county of Louth since the late 1990s. Throughout his lifetime he has experienced the border region as both a heavily militarised apparatus during the Troubles and as an invisible, frictionless border after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Following the announcement by the British government of the referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union, Swann embarked on a photographic project to document the border regions separating Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland, pursuing his enquiry through the two main components of his photographic practice, "landscape and memory" and "genius loci". His ongoing project is concerned with documenting the visual clues that remain visible in this palimpsest landscape: the echoes of previous situations and sentiments which speak of the present political "flux".

Born in Portadown, County Armagh, Northern Ireland in 1962, he studied at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and completed his Photographic Masters in Fine Art at the University of Ulster in May 2019. After graduating in 1985 with a BA in Fine Art Mixed Media he worked in photography based industries in London. Returning to Ireland in 1997 he set up a photographic production company, swannlocations, with the aim of attracting and facilitating international photographic productions to the country. He was a Photographer in Resident at the Gallery of Photography Ireland between 2019 and 2020, during which practical research was supported by the Ireland's Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.

Nigel Swann (Northern Ireland, 1962)
Borderlands

2017 Edition
Indoor installation
Curators: Shoair Mavlian and Monica Allende
Venue: Punta Begoña Galleries
Collaborator: Punta Begoña Galleries