Sustainment Experiments is an exhibition and engagement project that responds to the urgent need for a multidisciplinary approach to food production, farming, and climate change and biodiversity collapse. The project draws on design philosopher Tony Fry’s idea of the ‘Sustainment’, as an equivalent movement to the Enlightenment in its capacity to transform systems of thought and behaviours. In 2021, research was focused on farming and soil ecology through the PLOT, PLOT 2, conversations with farmers in Kilkenny, Carlow and Tipperary, and residencies at UCD Earth Institute and the Butler Gallery that informed and further developed ideas. Feeder at the RHA Gallery, shared research resources with gallery audiences.
The first Sustainment Experiments feast took place at Butler Gallery, Kilkenny in October 2022 and brought together 24 diners from farming, political and scientific backgrounds. Hosted by the Artist, a Bean an Tí, and a Fool, guests engaged over a bespoke eight-course menu responding to issues related to soil health and farming. The sensory experience of the food and tableware – porcelain dishes imprinted with soil and roots, potatoes cast in porcelain, cutlery engraved with quotes from ongoing research – was designed to activate conversation. Through the tableware which draws on the artist’s skills and experience in painting and making, and the event, which invited a cross-disciplinary expression of ideas, the affective power of the food, generated a frank, rich ecological conversation. A second, Eat Food Policy feast was held in Dublin on January 25 2023. Transcripts from both feast recordings served as the basis for The Quickening libretto, presented at The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art, Trinity Collage Dublin, in 2024.
Exhibition and feast supported by Butler Gallery, Kilkenny and the Arts Council of Ireland
