Yvette Monahan

Yvette Monahan is an Irish photographic artist from Sligo, who lives and works in Dublin. A graduate of the MFA Photography programme at the Belfast School of Art (2013), Yvette’s work has been exhibited extensively both in Ireland and internationally.

Yvette also holds an MA in Geography and Economics (1999) from Trinity College Dublin. In 2020, she completed a diploma in Art and Design at NCAD. In recent years, Yvette’s practice has changed from looking at stories held in the landscape to looking at stories held within. Her current practice looks to further her understanding of three main ideas, namely intuition, transcendence, and narrative. She engages with different processes to investigate these precepts, incorporating photography, drawing, sculpture and painting.

Yvette aims to create images that reflect the inner world and outer spaces.

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Artist Information

The Thousand-Year-Old Boy from the series, The Thousand-Year-Old Boy, 2015

Yvette Monahan, The Thousand-Year-Old Boy from the series, The Thousand-Year-Old Boy, 2015

Yvette Monahan, The Thousand-Year-Old Boy from the series, The Thousand-Year-Old Boy, 2015

Details: Archival pigment inkjet print on Hahnemühle Photo Baryta, 50x60cm (paper size), uneditioned print, produced 2021, acquired for the National Photography Collection 2022.

The Time of Dreaming the World Awake is a portrait of a place, a landscape of possibility. This photographic body of work is based in a small region in Southern France. I was drawn there initially by the story of Bugarach, the ‘magic’ mountain. Bugarach was somehow connected to a Mayan prophecy which indicated that the world as we know it, would end on December 21st, 2012. The prophecy claimed that this date would mark the beginning of a new era for humanity, a new and sublime future. Bugarach was to be the first bastion of this modern Arcadia. I felt that the landscape around Bugarach had a palpable charge and I was compelled to continuously return to photograph it throughout 2012. This idea of a new ideal destiny was appealing as it offered a sense of possibility.It allowed an allegorical landscape full of portents to exist, one that was beyond the visual reality. In order to access the intangible within the landscape, I engaged my intuition, photographing people and places only when I felt moved to. I used this method of visual enquiry to try and understand the existential nature of this place. Nothing happened last December, which was to be expected. Despite this, I realised how important it was for me to believe in the possibility of an idyll, even if it only existed in my mind.

The Time of Dreaming the World Awake by Yvette Monahan

About the book

The Time of Dreaming the World Awake is a portrait of a place, a landscape of possibility.

‘This photographic body of work is based in a small region in Southern France. I was drawn there initially by the story of Bugarach, the ‘magic’ mountain. Bugarach was somehow connected to a Mayan prophecy which indicated that the world as we know it, would end on December 21st, 2012. The prophecy claimed that this date would mark the beginning of a new era for humanity, a new and sublime future. Bugarach was to be the first bastion of this modern Arcadia.

I felt that the landscape around Bugarach had a palpable charge and I was compelled to continuously return to photograph it throughout 2012. This idea of a new ideal destiny was appealing as it offered a sense of possibility. It allowed an allegorical landscape full of portents to exist, one that was beyond the visual reality.

In order to access the intangible within the landscape, I engaged my intuition, photographing people and places only when I felt moved to. I used this method of visual enquiry to try and understand the existential nature of this place.

Nothing happened last December, which was to be expected. Despite this, I realised how important it was for me to believe in the possibility of an idyll, even if it only existed in my mind.’