Lorraine Cross’ four large scale Garzweiler Panels (2014), deal with the impacts of lignite coal mining and in particular with the lignite coal mining area at Garzweiler in the Düsseldorf/Cologne region in Germany. The series of paintings won the NUI Art and Design Prize 2014, having been selected from the works of the Graduation Show of the National College of Art and Design that year.
The National University of Ireland kindly made the Garzweiler Panels available on loan to the Goethe-Institut Irland.
Lignite results from compressed vegetation over millions of years. This brown coal has a low heat content, high emissions of CO2, is uneconomical to store or transport over long distances and only 25% is usable with the remaining 75% redeposited on site forming mountains the size of the Benbulben formation in Sligo. Despite this, Germany has brought lignite mining to expansive industrial levels. In the process, dozens of villages are literally transplanted and an estimated 40,000 people involuntarily displaced in order to excavate the coal beneath their homes. This dystopian reality receives scant media reportage. Since 2014, the situation has escalated further with over 1.000 people being displaced in addition to the staggering numbers above.
Lorraine Cross' Garzweiler Panel deal with this reality of the Rhineland as a place of change and lignite mining in a country that does not want to let go. The four wooden panels depict the history and feelings of the people of Lützerath, Immerath and other villages in the region in dark shades that mimic the soot and dust of the extraction of raw resource extraction process, while also emphasizing the connection to the environmentally damaging consequences.
Last One Standing
Lorraine Cross, Garzweiler Panels: Last One Standing, 2014
This fingernail house symbolises the long and solitary journey that one resident, Mr. Stephen Putz, of Immerath Düsseldorf underwent to take his case to Germany’s Constitutional Court with the support of BUND (Friends of the Earth). He lost his case before a panel of eight judges.
Clothes and Shoes
Lorraine Cross, Garzweiler Panels: Clothes and Shoes, 2014
An allusion to the Green movement and Green living as part of urban infrastructure as one recycles the remnants of one’s life on the road out of town – while the ground beneath one’s home is erased, taking everything in its path.
Die überwältigende Präsenz von Maschinen, die den Ort, an dem man aufgewachsen ist, rechtlich auslöschen. Der Verlust des Seins und die Sehnsucht nach einem Ort, den es nicht mehr gibt und zu dem man nicht mehr gehört.
Served Up!
Lorraine Cross, Garzweiler Panels: Served Up!, 2014
Until 1937 Germany’s ‘General Mining Act’ stated that property owners could never be forced to surrender ‘property containing residential, commercial or factory buildings’. This law was dropped under the Nazi regime based on the ‘common good’ because energy was needed to support Germany during the war.
About the Artist
Irish artist Lorraine Cross is a graduate of the National College of Art and Design. Since winning the NUI Design Prize, she has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally.
