Food production, farming and climate change are under the spotlight as part of a thought-provoking and exciting new sound and visual art project that began in The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art at Trinity College Dublin before embarking on a tour around key parts of rural Ireland, including Waterford.
The Quickening is a nationwide project and the culmination of three years of research which included sculptural plantings, workshops and performative feasts held in the City Assembly Rooms in Dublin and the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny under the banner of Sustainment Experiments.
It runs at The Douglas Hyde until June 23 and encompasses a Walls and Halls Tour of rural Ireland from April 18 to May 4. It comes to Coolydoody Farm, just outside Dungarvan on Friday, April 19, beginning at 7pm, supported by Lismore Castle Arts.
Presented for the first time in a major commissioned solo exhibition, The Quickening has now evolved into a must-see, must-hear multi-channel film and sound installation that explores the actions that must be taken around farming, food production and consumption in the face of present ecological and climate crises.
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Clodagh and James Foley’s farm at Coolydoody Farm is the venue for The Quickening film screening on April 19.
It will be hosted by the Foley family and supported by Lismore Castle Arts. After the screening, chef, food writer and founder of Ballymaloe Organic Farm, Darina Allen, will respond to the film in relation to selling direct from the farm.
The farm was one of the locations used in making the artwork, and James and Clodagh contributed to the free publication that accompanies the artwork.
“Our farm is primarily a dairy farm,” said James. “We’re milking 365 days a year and we are doing some tillage as well. We’re in organic conversion.
“It’s a two-year conversion and we’ve just gone eighteen or nineteen months. We’ll be able to sell as organic next April. There is a little bit more paperwork with organic. We’ve had extra inspections as a result.
“Any other inspections, Department of Agriculture inspections, they’d be there as well. But overall, since we’re farming the way we’re farming, we’re using less chemicals, not using any fertilisers or herbicides, less antibiotics – all that means less paperwork.
“Regenerative is kind of where we kind of started. Organic came second. We kind of figured after a while that we didn’t need any of these chemicals anymore. The regenerative idea, I suppose it’s more forgiving. If you’re not buying in all the inputs, if something goes wrong, at least it just hasn’t cost you as much. The benefits for nature are very obvious.
“There are more bees and more butterflies, more birds. I hate looking at a monoculture grass field now. It’s just totally boring. We were hoping we were going to a more profitable system.
“A lot of the time, if you use a herbicide or something, it might get you out of a short term problem. But long term, you’re kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul. I read a study somewhere that the more life you have on the farm and in your soil, the more organic matter, the more profitable the farm.”
Voices are central to creating engagement, renowned artist Deirdre O’Mahony, explained. “The starting point has been multiple conversations between farmers, scientists and politicians at organised feasts that generated open and frank conversations about food production and current challenges.
“These were transcribed for a libretto, developed with writer, Joanna Walsh, along with some of Ireland’s most exciting singers and musicians, among them Siobhán Kavanagh and Ultan O’Brien, each with a distinctive pitch, style, pace and vocabulary.”
“The sound we’ve created will communicate entangled human and non-human activities; sowing and harvesting, extreme weather and the hum of solar and wind farms, along with concerns about the reality of farming life; the volatile demands of the market, food regulation and policies.
“Within the soundscape, other voices are also being heard; breathing animals, insect and soil creatures, the assembled, complex mix of voices, accents and sounds, collective roots that unsettle ideological positions of purity and righteousness.
“The Quickening represents a polyvocal response to the most urgent questions affecting land and its inhabitants, giving voice to the invisible protagonists that shape our earth’s future and an idea of being-in-common that encompasses all earthly inhabitants,” Deirdre concluded.
The Quickening will tour to six rural locations in the east and south east, among them barns, farms halls and community centres.
The Walls and Halls Tour runs from April 18 to May 4, 2024, and visits Rathanna Community Hall Carlow, Coolydoody Farm Waterford, The Powerhouse Callan, Kilkenny, STAC Chapel in the Davis Road, Clonmel, Tipperary, Foresters Hall, Aughrim, Wicklow, and Blackbird Cultur-Lab, Foulksmills, Wexford.
The Quickening was commissioned by The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art and is supported by the Arts Council, The Douglas Hyde, Butler Gallery in Kilkenny, Carlow Arts Office, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Kilkenny Arts Office, Kunstverein Aughrim, Lismore Castle Arts, South Tipperary Arts Centre (STAC), VISUAL Carlow, Wexford Arts Office, and Wexford Arts Centre.
Deirdre O’Mahony’s The Quickening was co-produced by Georgina Jackson, Éilis Lavelle and Deirdre O’Mahony. Libretto was developed by Deirdre O’Mahony and Joanna Walsh with singers and performers Branwen Kavanagh, Michelle Doyle, Siobhán Kavanagh, Ultan O’ Brien and Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin.
Film and photography is by Tom Flanagan and Saskia Vermeulen. Sound recordist and audio post mix is by John Brennan and the editor is Michael Higgins.
