• Stephanie McBride
  

• Yvette Monahan
  

• 
  Winter 25
  Volume 42. No. 4

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Having grown up beside the Atlantic Ocean in Co Sligo, Yvette Monahan finds the sea is a constant presence in her life and work. Her focus on jellyfish off Sligo’s coast (2024 series) reinforced her desire to ‘tell vital stories about the ocean in a time of warming seas’.

Fish ears and fish scales are among the intriguing and mesmerising specimens in Monahan’s latest series, ‘The Ocean Within’, which explores the hidden life of fish as nature’s timekeepers. An artist known for her research-driven approach, Monahan worked with scientists in the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) in Northern Ireland for the project. Ewan Hunter, a behavioural ecologist at the institute, introduced Monahan to otoliths – the small ear bones of fish, which are akin to tree rings. The otoliths ‘opened up an entire universe of fish senses, allowing me to explore fish as living records’, Monahan recalls. ‘Each otolith carries the full chronology of a life: the seasonal feeding, the migrations traced, the waters remembered.’

Monahan’s images often come from near-microscopic fragments, yet hold these vast narratives within their fractal geometries. In this strange visual realm of otherness, the otoliths become opalescent gems; shiny scales – yet another form of living archive – resemble the contours of watery galaxies; and fluid fragments are like tiny planets in a deep firmament. The images are elegant, elemental and often enigmatic, such as the gleaming, blue-green creatures in Radical Subjectivity (Fig 6).

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