Caitriona Dunnett is an Irish artist based in the UK. Her practice is influenced by the land and its stories. She explores the heritage of the layered landscape and in cases intertwines it with personal narratives.

Hill Close Gardens, local to Dunnett, is one of the last groups of detached Victorian pleasure gardens. She has been drawn to the gardens’ sense of peace and its archive of past tenants and owners.

Dunnett has been using contemporary techniques, converting digital files into contact negatives to create handcrafted prints. Mostly working with the cyanotype, an early non-toxic photographic technique introduced by John Hershel, she tones her Prussian blue prints. Hill Close Gardens was toned with pomegranate, A Well Trodden Path with a leading brand of Irish tea, a favourite of many who walked the paths and Mass Paths was toned with a popular 19th century English tea that was once used to dye a Royal Christening gown.

Experimenting is central to Dunnett’s practice, as is finding the appropriate technique to convey her stories, working with camera-less photographic techniques, such as the lumen process to record the interaction between plants, surface and light. One project, Strawberry Leaves, was created by placing the plant directly on top of photographic paper, though unfixed the print will fade. Dunnett’s practice explores memory. She is intrigued by the traces people leave behind, the paths they weave through time and the legacies attached to them.