Gardens

Earth Writings Exhibition

Library, Maynooth University
November 20 2019

Seoidín O’Sullivan

artist | arts educator | interdisciplinary researcher

Exhibition Details:

HARD/GRAFT (2017 – 2020)

Artist’s sketches, images, artefacts from workshops of grafting heritage orchard trees, ‘Larceny of apples’ from Kilmainham Prison archives, video.

Towards community orchards and food forests for inner city Dublin, HARD /GRAFT is a collaborative arts project developed through a Citizen Artist Award with Studio 468, Common Ground.

The exhibition is a collection of material making and moments across the project.

The project explores sustainable, just and feminist cities; reproductive labour; care; land access; biodiversity; food access; and common public space. The orchard, once a space of privilege, becomes a hybrid space where the domestic, agricultural, community and critical moment meet.

HARD /GRAFT begins with fruit tree grafting. The Graft is the tree’s rhizome. By cutting branches (scion) we quite quickly graft and reproduce many trees.

Working with community groups and residents in St Andrews community centre, we collectively grafted 80 heritage apple trees from UCD Lamb-Clarke Collection towards that are now housed in a tree nursery in Richmond Barracks and will be planted across orchard sites in the coming weeks. By collectively grafting, planting and meeting, we create solidarity and alliance.

Artist’s Biography

Seoidín O’Sullivan is an artist, arts educator, and interdisciplinary researcher. Her projects are collaborative and focus on people joining together in action to protect and develop an aspect of their local commons.

She has a Masters in Fine Art Media from NCAD and is Art Lecturer in DCU’s department of Education.

Last year she was awarded the Next Generation Arts Council Bursary and in 2017 the Chicago Hyde Park Residency Award with IMMA and CREATE.Her art projects are collaborative and focus on people joining together in action to protect and develop an aspect of their local commons.

Read more here