The image and arrangement of hair plays a role in the formation of gender and cultural identity. The many different meanings ascribed to hair, particularly womenÕs hair, as a culturally significant material are a central part of numerous themes in Western folklore, mythology and consciousness. This multiplicity of theme and meaning is addressed in Folt.

Rapunzel of the famous fairytale let down her hair on request; the hair of the penitent Magdalene grew miraculously to cover her nakedness; Melisande's hair just wouldn't stop growing until it covered the whole country. What all of these stories have in common is they represent hair as the downfall of the female, while conversely figuring it as essential to her attractiveness. The images painted here are of hairstyles from many different eras and cultures. They are intended to form a kind of catalogue of identities, values, personae, imaginings and choices that girls and women adopt in order to operate within a world that continually sites them outside of understanding.

The fact that the hairstyles are reduced to very simple almost diagrammatic forms draws attention to our 'reading' of images and our interpretation of signs. The catalogue of diagrams is broken by the box which contains the detritus of hundreds of human heads, a physical manifestation that breaks into one's ability to 'read'. The hair of people who do not know each other is carefully bound and braided together to make an impossibly long and writhing Folt. which presses up against the glass and into our consciousness.

The use of Irish to title the work also addresses the questions of communication and loss. It is our own language, yet we do not speak it; it is despised and loathed while at the same time elevated to a high cultural plateau. We know its sounds, we recognise its shapes, yet we cannot bring these together to communicate meaning. English strains to denote the nuances that are everywhere in this familiar language that we recognise but cannot speak. lt is this strained position that Folt. occupies. The language of Irish and the language of hair are both embroiled in a dense thicket of history which involves the construction and loss of identity, as well as vast entanglements of shifting meanings.

Dublin, Ireland - December, 1994