Nigel Swann (b. 1962) studied at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, graduating in 1985 with a BA in Fine Art Mixed Media. He subsequently worked in photography based industries in London and elsewhere. Swann completed his Photographic Masters in Fine Art at the University of Ulster in 2019.

Swann’s project The Borderlands surveys an intriguing location, known locally as ‘The Black Pig’s Dyke’, a 2000-year- old boundary that runs parallel to the present-day Irish / UK border. After Brexit, it now shadows another border, that of the European Union and the UK. After independence in 1922 and in particular, during the ‘Troubles’ the border was visible and instrumental in defining identities. Since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 travelling along and across this border there have been no physical expressions, no watchtowers, fences or walls, it is unseeable, it is a virtual psychological construct.

The ancient dark physicality of the Black Pig’s Dyke alongside the architectural clarity of the disused Cahans Presbyterian Meeting House in the border county of Monaghan act as a conceptual starting point for this inquiry into the border.