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, IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) and Grizedale Arts (UK) have collaborated to create an extraordinary new project in 2016 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 this August.

Artists and collaborators include: Eavan Atkin / Samuel Bishop / Kat Black / Bluebell Youth Projects / Tania Bruguera / Rhona Byrne / Marcus Coates / Common Ground / Emily Cropton / CREATE / Coniston village building team / Michelle Darmody / Drew and Middori / Robert Eikmeyer / Firestation / Motoko Fujita / Ryan Gander / Liz Gillis / Nicola Goode / Irish Architecture Foundation / Brenda Kearney / Suzanne Lacy / Renzo Martens / Jonathan Meese / Meg Narongchai / Deirdre O’Mahony / Seoidin O’Sullivan / Debbie Paul / Rialto Youth Projects / Niamh Riordan / Kirsty Roberts / Katie Sanderson / Sarah Staton / St. Andrews Community Centre / Francesca Ulivi / Miranda Vane / Fiona Whelan / public works / NÓS Workshop / NVA / Somewhere / Sweet Water Foundation / Villagers from the Swiss village of Leytron / Tom Watt & Tanad Williams, and many more.

Entitled A Fair Land, the project aims to develop a system for living using basic resources in a creative way. Today’s professionalised culture has arguably moved to distance us from our inherent everyday creativity, instead promoting systematised living, convenience and globalisation, all fundamentally based on the exploration of "labour capital" (other people’s labour). The ambition with this project is to create a complete living system that is elemental, immediate and sustainable. Developed collectively by a wide range of people, including artists and creative practitioners, A Fair Land will create a model for a way to live which looks at how creativity—an inherent human function—and its use in the everyday can act as a means to enable change and empowerment.

This model will centre around a glut crop of courgettes grown in straw bales—the village crop—from which food, products and education opportunities will be 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 will put forward their visions for education drawn from "village" resources.

Each day the village will offer its visitors opportunities to eat, make, think or trade—and through that process to copy, assimilate and teach. With a focus on creating objects that are useful, desirable and achievable, A Fair Land will present an active representation of the place of creativity in society, and will be a place for families, friends and strangers to gather, get involved and experience alternative perspectives on living.

The project has been delivered with the generous and creative support of construction collaborators Swift Scaffolding, Hantech and Rilco and has received additional funding from the Goethe Institut Irland.

This project is presented as part of an exciting on-going initiative, New Art at IMMA, proudly supported by Matheson, which allows IMMA to continue to support artists’ vital work in a strand of programming that recognises and nurtures new and emerging talents, new thinking and new forms of exhibition-making.

A Fair Land is part of the official Ireland 19 I 2016 Cultural programme

A Fair Land programme
A Fair Land will be active from Friday, August 12 with core activities then happening from Thursdays–Sundays until August 28.

There is a daily schedule of activities and special events that will offer visitors opportunities to make, learn and take part in the A Fair Land Village including Creative Fitness, Making Stations, a Food Power School, a Reinvent / Discuss / Debate series, Fair Family workshops and a School for Revolutionary Girls. The casual visitor can enjoy the Ambulatory Food Vendors and their interesting fare while wandering through the garden of everyday delights.

For more details and a full weekly programme please visit www.imma.ie or the IMMA Facebook and Twitter pages or by dropping into the main IMMA reception. #AFairLand

A Fair Land opening hours: Thursday–Sunday 11:30am–5pm