ART-PRESENTATION:A Fair Land

Echoing the role artists and the European Arts and Crafts movement played in creating and articulating a new vision for Ireland pre-1916, Irish Museum of Modern Art and Grizedale Arts have collaborated to create “A Fair Land” a project that examines the function of art. Re-thinking the Royal Hospital of Kilmainham cobblestoned quadrant as a model village, the project takes shape as a visual and working installation in IMMA’s iconic courtyard.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Irish Museum of Modern Art Archive

With full title “A Fair Land-And/or a courgette-based economy”, the project aims to develop a system for living using basic resources in a creative way. Today’s culture has arguably moved to distance us from our inherent everyday creativity, instead promoting a systematic living, convenience and globalisation, all fundamentally based on the exploration of “Labour Capital” (other people’s labour). The ambition of this project is to create a complete living system that is elemental, immediate and sustainable. Developed collectively by a wide artists and creative practitioners, the project creates a model for a way to live which looks at how creativity and its use in the everyday can act as a means to enable change and empowerment. The model focuses around a glut crop of courgettes grown in straw bales from which food, products and education opportunities are derived. Focusing on quick no-frills systems, the project acts as an opportunity to re-think, re-educate and re-engage from both a personal and societal perspective. At its core is an idea of education where the system itself is the school, and to this end a number of artists put forward their visions for education drawn from “village” resources. “A Fair Land” presents an active representation of the place of creativity in society, and is a place for people to gather, get involved and experience alternative perspectives on living. The project is a reflection of pre-1916 Ireland and reveals a vision for society informed, and led by creativity and artistic practice where the creative voice was central to new visions for modern society emerging in Ireland and internationally.

Info: Irish Museum of Modern Art, Kilmainham, Royal Hospital, Military Road, Dublin, Duration 12-28/8/16, Days & Hours: Thu-Sun 11:30-17:00, www.imma.ie