No Man’s Land: Art & The Rights of Nature is the title of the 2022 Burren Annual Exhibition at Burren College featuring new work by North American based artist, Hugh Pocock.
The symposium, No Man’s Land: Art & The Rights of Nature will bring together a panel of artists and environmental activists to discuss the relationship between nature and the law, examining how artistic practice can inform or advance our understanding of civic and social responsibility in relation to this issue.
The Burren Annual exhibition brings Irish and international artists working with diverse modes of practice to the Burren to engage local and visiting audiences. Inaugurated in 2004 it foregrounds Burren College of Art as a site for discourse and artistic engagement and prioritises the rural as a hub for building local and international creative networks. It is supported by Clare Arts Office.
The exhibition will include Pocock’s recent photographic, sculptural and video projects that are explorations of the sovereignty of the non-human world, inspired by the many global movements that are campaigning to have Nature recognized as a Living Entity. Pocock sees this legal incorporation of Indigenous knowledge as the beginning of a fundamental and radical shift in humanities relationship with Nature. He asks the questions “Can we act without taking possession?” and “What happens when humans give away their dominance over Nature?”
The exhibition will also be a place of knowledge sharing from multiple voices, where viewers can learn how to become engaged activists in the fight to give Rights to Nature.
The exhibition will contain the project launch for a sculpture also titled No Man’s Land. Currently in proposal phase, No Man’s Land is a permanent 5+acre park that is off limits to humans.
Hugh Pocock is an internationally exhibiting artist who lives on unceded Susquehannock/Piscataway Land in Baltimore Maryland USA.