SPUD Project and Publication

SPUD began in 2009, initiating a process of research that led to the development of collaborative projects, commissioned artworks, events and installations located internationally over a decade. The project has been fuelled by collaborations and research carried out by Deirdre, with the potato as the catalyst for thinking on Irish culture, food security and globalised food production, seed diversity and sovereignty, attitudes towards rurality, identity and otherness in Ireland, it became a potent image.

By looking back to the Irish Famine, further back to the colonial violence that brought the potato to Europe, and connecting it to migration, famine and food security today, SPUD makes use of the potato to map controversies around these threads through the project’s various iterations.

Projects include SPUD: X-PO, SPUD: Frieze, SPUD: London, SPUD: Morocco, SPUD: Jiwar, X-SPUD, Workhouse Guild, Potato/Batata, A Village Plot, Trial + Error and The Persistent Return.

A publication SPUD 2009 – 2019 documents a decade of SPUD events, collaborations, conversations and artworks and encompasses most of the projects listed above

Limited edition: 300 copies; 56 pages, 16 full colour, hardback

ISBN 978 1 5272 55364

Purchase SPUD 2009 – 2019 online.