Domestic Drift is concerned with everyday life – the ordinary activities, states of mind and conditions of existence that fill time outside the moments of drama and spectacle. It examines the sense of ordinariness inherent in the repetitive, habitual work of home while trying to appreciate the experience as simultaneously mundane and precious.
The everyday is complex terrain. Always there, readily and universally available; surely it is so obvious that it needs no unveiling. And yet it is also shrouded in haze, our sense of it dulled by familiarity and habit. While the unremarkable constitutes the fabric of much of life, our attention is lured away from the quotidian toward the dramatic and exotic.
Privileging the apparent over the obscure fuels the fragmentation of everyday life and creates an impression that those parts of life lived away from the public arena are unproductive and insignificant. The result of this triviality barrier is that the most ordinary, familiar parts of daily life, while seeming the most present and obvious, are often disconnected from our sensory perceptions and conscious thoughts.
Inspired by Guy Debord’s Theory of the Dérive, I began by following his directions:
In a dérive, one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there…“
Clare Gallagher was born in Northern Ireland and studied photography in London,
Canterbury and Belfast, earning an MFA Photography with distinction.
Her work has been exhibited in Belfast, Dublin, London, New York, Houston and Delhi and been featured in Lenscratch, Oh Comely, Prism and Source magazines. She was selected for Saatchi’s New Sensations 2011 and Plat(t)form 2012 at Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland.
A photography lecturer since 2003, Clare is also currently working on Verges, a new project about weeds with support from the Arts Council.
For the complete series and more of Clare’s work please visit her portfolio
☞ www.claregallagher.co.uk
related articles:
☞ The Guardian: Clare Gallagher’s best shot
☞ Prism magazine issue 03: ‚Domestic Drift‘ featured along with Alec Soth, Yoshi Kametani and David Patrick Welch
☞ Oh Comely magazine: Interview with Clare Gallagher about ‚Verges‘
