Composting Colonialism: Towards the Radical Garden

Samantha Brown (UK), Padraig Cunningham (IRL), Grace Enemaku (IRL), Yvanna Greene (IRL), Louis Haugh (IRL), Marianne Keating (IRL), Elida Maiques (ES), Siobhan McGibbon (IRL), Laura Ní Fhlabhín (IRL) and Harold Offeh (UK)

Curated by Elida Maiques and Anne Mullee

What does it mean to decolonize the garden? Selected works by Irish, Spanish and British artists consider the affects and legacy of colonialism, horticulture and the garden as a status symbol, inviting the audience to explore radical post-colonial horticultural practice and histories.

Imbued with notions of displacement, class, exile, invasion, appropriation, theft and hunger, the history of gardening and horticulture on the island of Ireland and beyond contains the very recipe of colonization, from the plantations of both people and forests to the introduction of monoculture food crops.

Through this lens we spy glimpses of horticulture as a colonised/decolonised space, from the proposed rehabilitation of an invasive plant species in Siobhán McGibbon’s installation Making Odd: A Goat, A Bee, A Psyllid, Fungus Knotweed and Me, (2023) to the hubris of the ultimate 18th Century status symbol – the garden with its own grotto-dwelling living hermit – as reimagined by Harold Offeh in this reiteration of his 2012 work Arcadia Reimagined.

An accompanying programme of public engagement events draws on Elida Maique’s expanded community-based practice as founder of The Mermaid Garden Project (2021-preent), role as Bray Library Seed Librarian and as facilitator of guerrilla gardening project Edible Bray.

An accompanying publication, A Garden Sampler, contains texts, gardening notes, lore, radical histories and observations drawn from Ireland’s complex relationship to gardening and horticulture.