Thomas Hunter

Lambay Island, the landmass just off the Irish coast, inspired a lyrical interpretation of the experience of never quite arriving. Set against the shifting edges of land and sea, the still and moving images trace a quiet journey shaped by tides, memory, and the slow pull of longing. Islands, shorelines, and water are recurring motifs, not as destinations but as thresholds: places between departure and return, presence and absence, past and possibility. 

 While rooted in my own experience of Irish migration and identity, the work does not speak through anecdotes. Perhaps listening more than it speaks, it leans into uncertainty and offers a space to sit with the unspoken, the in-between and unfinished journeys of becoming. Its rhythm mirrors the rhythm of life itself: uncertain, layered, unresolved. The lyrical form resists narrative and explanation. Instead, it offers symbolic and suggestive language, inviting the viewer to drift through their own internal landscapes. The natural world turns into emotional portrait of sorts, materializing connections to the invisible, the sensed-but-not-seen, and aiming to evoke feelings that are both deeply personal and widely shared. 

In a world marked by dislocation, migration, and constant change, Lambay offers a quiet urgency, a place to sit with what’s unresolved, and to find, in that stillness, something essential and human.