LCGA Exhibitions 2022

This exhibition continues Mackey’s ongoing investigation into how our earth is approached and managed, our relationship to the earth's history and our direct relationship to how we manage its produce.

The aesthetic of Mackey’s art lends itself to rhythms and patterns, to the labour around the management of SEED MATTER wherever we are in the Globe. Christine Mackey employs diverse disciplines, subject matter and tactics to generate different kinds of knowledge of place, including their hidden histories and ecological formations. Using aesthetics as well as quasi-scientific methods, her work explores the interactive potential of art as a research tool and its capacity for social and environmental change. She looks at Art as imbued with active agency a field of endeavour.

Christine Mackey lives and works in North Leitrim. Her practice combines site-specific and public works, exhibitions, performance, and art-books. Mackey has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally and is a recipient of numerous awards and residencies.

Christine Mackey's 'Seed Matter' book launch on 7th March after Artists Talk @ 5.30

The SEED MATTER publication produced and designed by Christine Mackey utilizes the ‘historical pamphlet ’as the basis for the design and content of this work because of its association with ‘rogue literature’ that created an alternative space for public debate. Bruno Latour has variously described such a space as ‘voices of the collective’ or the ‘alting’ of universal citizens. In taking up these ideas, Mackey is interested in how artists can develop work in a collaborative context,transcending notions of representation for the production of a series of possible events or gatherings in various forms such as this publication and exhibition.

In using the event as a connective process, the pamphlet and exhibition work together in assembling a wide range of responses from people concerned with current debates on foods overeignty,seed culture,land use and community gardening.

Contributions include: Roland von Bothmer,Svaldbard Global Seed Vault,Sarah Kleeger & Andrew Still,The Seed Ambassadors,Madeline McKeever, Brown Envelope Seed, Sanaa Abdul Wahab Al Sheick, Iraqi Gene Bank,Kate Corder, Artist & Allotment holder, Betty Geelan & Maureen Harrison, Dr. Vandana Shiva,NAVDANYA, Kultivator Artists and Farmers, Kerr Pink, Fidelma Mullane, Cultural Geographer, Mitch Dunne,Transition Town Group,Leitrim, CluaininGarden Allotment Holders,and Dr.Ollie Moore.

Realised with support from The Arts Council of Ireland, Limerick City

Gallery of Art,The Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, The Leitrim Sculpture Centre,

Leitrim County Council Arts Office.