projects

The Great Work of Preserving was based on ideas from a thesis of the same name, exploring ideas of skill, knowledge and creativity in traditional and domestic food practices. It asks how we consider and value this work – and how its value changes in the world at large. The exhibition, a practical development of the thesis, took a cosmos of ideas as starting points – the jumbled ethnographic museum, old obsessions with curiosity cabinets and collections, folk objects and folk crafts, and the ever-enduring appeal of edible stuff. Through a variety of work (some edible), the show considered which processes, objects and ideas we seek to preserve, and why.

The Dream of Kiwanasoto (2017 - ongoing)

The Dream of Kiwanasoto is a long-term programme of workshops, events, residencies and exchanges between Grizedale Arts, Fairland Collective and Kiwanasoto Gathering Group, as a means to creatively reconsider local resources in Kiwanasoto (a small village in rural Japan). Our last visit involved the building of a community oven, art workshops in schools in order to make and develop local products, and the opening of ‘The Expanded Dream Cafe’ - an exhibition and eating space to showcase village work. Future plans will link Kiwanasoto with A Confederacy of Villages - a global village network project, led by Grizedale Arts with Fairland Collective as invited collaborators.

John, Is This Your Cup of Tea? (2019)

'John, Is This Your Cup of Tea?' was a collaborative residency project led by Fairland Collective with residents of Saint Joseph’s care home in Shankill. It was designed to work with the residents in every stage of dementia, by focusing on stimulating the five senses and an extra one - an unknown hidden sense. A common area was created to display the objects and allow them to to filter into everyday use. All the pottery was made together with the residents, volunteers and staff through a series of workshops and conversations, and brought together by the collective.

Image courtesy of Motoko Fujita

The Great Work of Preserving (2018)

SPONGE SCHOOL is a programme of visual arts and cake-baking developed by Fairland Collective, and consists of recipes shared by older people, redeveloped by children and their imaginative skills, and baked together by both children and adults. This particular event was the culmination of a series of meetings and workshops with Bluebell Community Centre’s older women’s group and afterschool club. Our dream for SPONGE SCHOOL is a wedding cake commission!

SPONGE SCHOOL (2018 - ongoing)

A Fair Land, Irish Museum of Modern Art in association with Grizedale Arts: A Fair Land was a residency reform project developed as a way to consider the idea of art as a social force; it involved the building of a utopian model village, the development of a currency and manifesto, the making of ‘useful, desirable and achievable’ products, public meals and a food school.

Images courtesy of Motoko Fujita

Image courtesy of Motoko Fujita

Kastanatopia (publication due in late 2021): Collaborative research project with anthropologist Desiree Kumpf and the Konitsa School of Comparative Folklore in Epirus, Northern Greece, based on a discussion of multispecies fieldwork methods. In particular, we are exploring sensory approaches as ways to access 'chestnut worlds' – inspired by Anna Tsing's “art of noticing” and Andrew Mathew's 2018 study of abandoned chestnut forests in Italy. We aim to sketch out a research design for an extensive study of eco-cultural transformation in the Kastanotopia villages. This kind of multispecies ethnography can open up new perspectives on regional change, by showing how people and landscapes mutually transform each other.

Kastanatopia (2016 - ongoing)

BROTHY was a collaborative work made with artist Millie Egan as part of TOMBOLO 19 residency (run by Lay of the Land). Brothy took seaweeds, sensory perception of landscape and an abandoned outhouse as its starting points. Through built, foraged and handmade elements, Brothy was designed as a space for individuals to sit, imbibe and contemplate the landscapes of Tombolo. A new structure was built to house a meal of broth and crackers, a zen window, a seat for one: Brothy invited the senses to engage fully with the surrounding bounty of sights, sounds and tastes. The edible offerings were made with seaweeds and seawater from nearby shores - you could sit in the landscape while the landscape sat in your belly. Brothy playfully invited questions of what it is to participate in landscape, how we frame it, and how we determine and interact with different ecologies.

PS Additionally, our seaweed crackers were given a 10/10 rating by students of Goleen National School.