Cultivating Engagement: Contemporary Art, Farming and Climate Change
For this week's coffee morning, we're joined by Deirdre O'Mahony (https://deirdre-omahony.ie/), our artist-in-residence for 2021/2022 in partnership with UCD Parity Studios and Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council. Deirdre will discuss her current research and projects Sustainment Experiments and her commission for Field Exchange, a Creative Ireland Climate Change project at Brookfield Farm, Tipperary. Sustainment Experiments is a new artwork and public engagement project that considers what actions can be taken in the face of ecological and climate crises. So far, humanity's approach has been about moving forward - faster, harder and better. Against this backdrop of anthropocentric production and consumption, philosopher Tony Fry put forward the idea of 'Sustainment' as an equivalent movement to the Enlightenment in its capacity to transform systems of thought and behaviours. Sustainment Experiments will think through this idea. With research, plantings and food events, it will give form to a collective political ecology that considers inter-species dependency. Deirdre O’Mahony’s practice is informed by a deep interest in rural sustainability and farming. Her PhD research and public art project, X-PO, revived a former rural post office and this practice-based research further developed through the SPUD project (2009-2019).
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