Abstract/Summary

This joint collaborative presentation with accompanying images emerged out of a correspondence between Ciara Healy (University of Reading) and Adam Stead (MFA Student University of Reading). Their letters build a creative relationship of practice that documents how their visual and curatorial work attends to ecological and environmental ways of knowing in socio-agricultural and metaphysical modes. Adam Stead’s letters are concerned with the socio-political and socio- ecological impacts of increased industrialisation and consumerism on agriculture within rural communities in Britain and Ireland. His sculptural works reflect on his relationship with the farm he grew up on and its future. Coinciding with this research, Ciara Healy’s letters discuss the outcomes of a funded interdisciplinary curatorial model she developed in rural west Wales. Thin Place tested new insights in curating and gallery education in an area highlighted on the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation. The exhibition, education programme, international symposium and publication she produced invited specialists from many different fields to explore their perceptual commonalities. Their insights into the mythologies, histories and ecologies of the local area increased levels of wellbeing and fostered a deeper sense of belonging in the small rural community where she worked. Through this collaborative presentation both Adam and Ciara take different, and sometimes contentious positions on emergent ideas in eco-criticism, eco- feminism and post-humanism. Given the severity of our socio-environmental situation, this dialogue has a degree of urgency, as it proposes a movement away from reductive economic systems towards ecological and spiritual economies, which focus on sustainability, community, and relational co- existence.