#harvestlab

I’ve been commissioned to create a body of work for the Harvest Festival, Peterborough, during the weekend of 19th & 20th September 2015. The opportunity involves working with the internationally renowned Studio Orta Partnership (exhibiting at this years Venice Biennale http://www.studio-orta.com/en/new/153/Biennale-de-Venezia-Glasstress-Gotika), as well as visiting their studio in Paris. 

The commission has been developed with Metal (http://www.metalculture.com/about-us/peterborough/ ), an organisation founded by Jude Kelly OBE in 2002 to champion the need for continual investment in artistic investigation and the development of innovative ideas that could shift the thinking in the UK cultural sector. 

‘Lucy + Jorge Orta are happy to announce their collaboration with the arts organisation Metal. They will develop an 18 month program of public events, publications and exhibition based on the theme of Harvest.’

Peterborough, the location of the commission, is home to historic large communities from Italy and Pakistan and new communities from Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Portugal. The city itself has the only primary school in the country where all of the pupils have English as a second language. The city and its surrounding Fen environs in Cambridgeshire were once known as the ‘breadbasket’ of England, with a long agricultural history of supplying the crops and vegetables to feed the nation.

“Within Harvest Lab I am keen to develop ideas & propositions that begin with the word ‘HARVESTMENT’ and the dynamic relational ‘pull’ between investing and harvesting.”

Whilst considering the potency of ‘photosynthetic’ processes:

‘Ultimately, the only wealth that can sustain any community, economy or nation is derived from the photosynthetic process - green plants growing on regenerating soil.’  Allan Savory, Zimbabwean ecologist, farmer, soldier, exile, environmentalist, international consultant, and president and co-founder of The Savory Institute.