Description
Opening on 12 September at 6.00 pm
The artist IZedA will stage a three-day performance on a frame supporting 30 slates on the façade of the entrance, whilst two other artists will create a work using wood and iron.
The owners are restoring a derelict site, cluttered with three generations’ worth of accumulated rubbish – stone, wood, fibres, iron and plastic. The theme is reuse, which has guided their renovation work for four years now. The artists’ only instruction is to use objects found or used on these sites. They work with, or incorporate, wood, stone and iron.
What will be missing from the final pieces is plastic, even though it was abundantly present on the surface of the ground and in the storage areas. Yet it is the primary indicator of our overconsumption and a root cause of the difficulty in cultivating the land. Yet, like any toxic substance, it is indispensable. For, paradoxically, without water – and therefore without pipes, pumps or tanks, as well as shade structures and greenhouses – it is very difficult to produce enough food to sustain ourselves.
This garden is also an experimental gateway to humble art; this site dates back to the Early Iron Age, around 800 BC – meaning 141 generations have been using, shaping, transforming, piling up, building and polluting it.
The artists fit right in with the place; coming from rural backgrounds and modest circumstances, they do not adhere to the conventions of the art world or those of the major cities. It will be up to you to tell us whether beauty can only be about consumption and the exclusivity of class?
