Martin Cregg’s Midlands project has been ten years in the making. It began by documenting the development of housing estates and light industry in the Midlands area of Ireland, carried out under the official auspices of the National Spatial Strategy. Over time Cregg’s worked catalogued the effects of new housing, roads and small factories on the rural landscape, and then, as the project progressed, began to concentrate on the details, traces and textures which these developments have left behind in their failed and faded utopianism. Midlands has just been published in book form. The book itself is a finely crafted object, a distillation of ideas and artistic practice, just like the images in it. I was delighted to write an essay on Martin’s work, which is included in Midlands.
See images of the book and purchase it directly from Martin Cregg here.
Colin Graham 