Gabriel Beranger (1729–1817) was a Dutch Huguenot who settled in Dublin, made trips around Ireland to sketch megalithic monuments, ruined castles and abandoned monasteries before working up watercolours for sale. Jovially, he often illustrated the foreground of his compositions with images of gentry lying in the green grass or perhaps pointing with enthusiasm at a fascinating architectural feature. Sometimes he didn’t visit the place depicted, instead deciding to copy from other sources or drawings. This often resulted in exaggerated proportions of buildings, hills and trees, all for dramatic effect.

After Beranger combines a selection of his images with contemporary updates of sites portrayed. A dolmen, found in an open field in the eighteenth century, is now positioned within suburbia. Another view of a bay and sea beyond is today compromised by the construction of a large holiday home. The constant warping and changes on these sites expand landscape into a fleeting animation or type of perpetual motion, something that can never be truly essential in pictorial form.