Lorraine Cross
Garzweiler Panels

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 National University of Ireland 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.

The exhibition can be visited during the regular opening hours of the Goethe-Institut Irland at 37 Merrion Square in Dublin.

Artist statement:
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 Panels 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.