Fogo Island OCADU Summer Residency

According to ancient manuscripts, in the 6th century St. Brendan and 17 monks set sail from the west coast of Ireland and made the treacherous journey to Newfoundland. They travelled in a curragh, essentially a wood-framed boat covered with sewn ox hides.

The ancient craft of curragh building can still be found hidden away in one or two pockets of western Ireland, but the curragh has long since disappeared from Newfoundland. However Newfoundlanders, including those on Fogo Island, still use a wood-framed boat known as a punt. Given that many of the early settlers in Newfoundland came from the west of Ireland, I intend to gather visual evidence for how the curragh could be the potential predecessor of the punt.

I will make a study of the evolution and life cycle of the Punt using field notes (including drawings) and documentary media, and explore the relationship with curragh building.

I am also intrigued by how the construction of a wood-framed boat shares an implicit quality in common with the seal's skeletal system. I am also conscious of the resurgence in the native boat building craft and how the Great Fogo Island Punt Race contributes to keeping this interest alive.

I see this project as relevant to my larger program of study, which considers machine aestheticism, in that it allows me to focus on the pre-industrial, craft-based methods used in boat-building by the islanders. I find it interesting that the punt, which was overshadowed by the demands of the industrialization of fish processing, has survived the commercial decline of the fishing industry and found a renewed meaning in Fogo’s sense of its own identity.