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, plantings and interventions made for the SPUD Project include: SPUD: X-PO SPUD: Frieze, SPUD: London, SPUD: Morocco, SPUD: Jiwar, X-SPUD, Workhouse Guild, Potato/Batata, A Village Plot, Trial + Error culminating in a two-screen sound and moving image project, The Persistent Return.
Research Supported by The Arts Council of Ireland/An Chomhairle Ealaíon
