The Sea Inside Us

What is food without salt? Food without flavour? Life without emotion? There is the remains of an ancient ocean under the countries of northern Europe, a bed of salt that extends from Ireland to Russia. For 10 years Lyons has been tracing this seam making carvings from rock salt of various colours. The film follows the artist into mines 300 metres underground, and across the snow- capped peaks of vast mountain ranges. Against these epic backdrops salt becomes a prism through which she formulates questions that fathom the unknowable while reaching for the eternal. The film is shot in sites of salt production in Northern Ireland, Switzerland and Sicily and at the artist’s coastal home in the west of Ireland.