You Cannot Climb a Hedge reflects on a changing rural identity where tangible and intangible boundaries are at once local and global, material and immaterial.

In 2003, I realised that the upland area where I live in County Kilkenny was a blank on the electoral map. The area was given up for the key; referencing common landmarks such as rivers, hills, roads, towns, and villages throughout the rest of the county.

Thinking through this cartographic erasure more broadly – whilst working creatively on my doorstep – this ‘gap’ in the map provides an aperture through which to reveal the conceptual disinvestment, critical neglect and subordination of the rural in general in Ireland. This ‘gap’ motivates my practice-led research which aims to speak-back-to its historical and political basis. Gaps such as these incite us to ask how the rural is constructed, and what the cultural politics of identity are that go into these constructions.