July 2012 – ALLOTMENT 4 / Edible Eastside
TROVE & mac birmingham’s ALLOTMENT Project
and Edible Eastside present:
Post Colonial-Now
Karen Mc Lean
Launch: Sat 14th July 2012 12 – 5pm
part of the Warwick Bar Summer Fete
Talk: Sat 18th August 2012 1 – 4pm
with Charlie Levine, Cathy Wade & Karen Mc Lean.
Lunch served at 1pm, talk begins at 2pm.
Open: Thursday, Friday and Saturday’s
between 12 – 5pm
Edible Eastside,122 Fazeley Street, Digebth, Birmingham, B5 5RS
2012 saw two allotment/art projects open at two very different venues in Birmingham, UK.
First was the established institution, mac birmingham, that launched, in January 2012, ALLOTMENT – a project showcasing 10 regionally based curators, independent galleries and artists in a rotating plot programme; each plot owner growing and adapting during the 9 month long project. TROVE, an independent art gallery and programme based in the old Science and Industry Museum in the Jewellery Quarter, are one of the mac birmingham ALLOTMENT plot holders.
The second allotment project is the concrete garden, Edible Eastside. Situated in a former derelict canal side space in Digbeth it is home to actual allotment plots as well as a contemporary arts programme run by Hedge Enquiry.
Hedge Enquiry/Edible Eastside have invited TROVE, for their final installment/plot rotation at mac birmingham, to go off site to their other allotment/art project happening in Birmingham, and to take place in the Warwick Bar Summer Fete event.
For this project TROVE has invited artist Karen Mc Lean to reassemble her shack piece, Post Colonial – Now, at Edible Eastside, and decorate their mac birmingham ALLOTMENT plot with her hand made wall paper.
Born and raised in the Caribbean, Mc Lean’s move to the UK over 10 years ago provoked her to look into the interconnectivity of the two places. The Post Colonial – Now shack displayed at Edible Eastside resembles, to UK citizens, a shed – especially when placed at an allotment. However, when looked at closely, this ‘shed’ appears to be a home, the architecture of the structure changes with the addition of things, such as a clothesline, and the shed becomes a shack, a shelter, a hut. Based directly on some of the homes found in her native Trinidad, this shack motivates thoughts of displacement, identity, home and globalization.
These thoughts are also echoed directly in the wallpaper piece, Primitive Matters at TROVEs mac birmingham plot. The wallpaper immediately domesticates the space, though the strong colonial imagery found within it confronts viewers about cultural heritages, and links the two sites projects.
www.TROVE.org.uk | www.edibleeastside.net | www.macarts.co.uk | www.hedgeenquiryedibleeastside.com
