Low Resolution Souls

Low Resolution Souls reimagines Old Croghan Man, a bog body from Iron Age Ireland discovered over 2,000 years after his death. Exceptionally tall and well-nourished, with hands that suggested a life removed from manual labour. Though Old Croghan Man’s status contrasted with his violent end: his torso was severed, he was stabbed, bound, and placed in a bog. likely as part of a ritual sacrifice tied to kingship and fertility rites.

In this painting, his prone figure is stretched across the oyster-covered rocks of Monument Beach, a site chosen for its atmosphere of deep time. By translating the archaeological body into a contemporary landscape, the work reflects on how we reconstruct the lives of the long dead through fragments, conjecture, and imagination.

The title draws from Douglas Hofstadter’s I Am a Strange Loop, where he describes how we carry “low resolution” versions of others within our minds. In engaging with Old Croghan Man’s remains, we too create a partial simulation of a life, an echo or soul from the past simulated in our minds.