Artist as Family: Key (draft)

Thursday, 15 July 2010

Key (draft)

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Additional food planted on the first community plant-in day (the following plants relate to the areas on the drawing that we've labelled annuals and/or herbs):

Annuals – a variety of brassicas, peas, nasturtiums and marigolds.

Perennials – native parsnip, lemon verbena, lemon grass, lavender, rosemary, pigface, dianella, rhubarb, thyme, mint, comphrey, whiteroot, Vietnamese mint and strawberries.

We would love to make this map of the food forest more interactive and web accessible. Any budding web designers out there interested in helping us?

7 comments:

Anonymous19 July 2010 at 11:24
hi AAF

the whole project is divine and inspiring.

those central chestnuts will be pretty huge won't they?
It really will be a forest. I never could picture it from the name
until now/

I love the aerial shape - like lungs, or breasts.

Thanks for that!

t
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Pedestrian Pastor19 July 2010 at 11:34
The Food Forest has helped me develop my theological story.

The Food Forest is planted on the front of the church of St Michaels Anglican church, Surry Hills. It is in the center of Australia's largest metropolis. A city is parasitical in its ecological impact - it derives its sustenance from the hinterland and beyond. The Food Forest is a patch of productivity, diversity, fruitfulness and sharing in the heart of the parasite.

The Food Forest is shaped like a footprint. It is a symbol of the footprint of Jesus (size-7). It is a bio-symbol for God's desire to see his people be productive, diverse, fruitful and sharing. The congregations of St Michaels can continue to be this way if we remain connected to Jesus, right in the heart of the biggest metropolis in Australia.

I would encourage any church to engage with the concept of a Food Forest and/or community garden. It is a bio-reminder of God's desire to see his people reach and bless others.

Francis Chalwell, Minister of St Michael's Anglican, Surry Hills
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Permapoesis26 July 2010 at 20:27
thanks for your comments t and pp,

yes, i agree, church grounds are ideal environments for community gardens – good clean soil and happy microbes.
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shine little light*28 July 2010 at 11:53
Went by to have a look the other day and I think it is Brilliant! I've wanted to see a veggie garden at st micks for a long time. Thanks for your beautiful vision!
Soph, Surry hillsider
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Anonymous31 July 2010 at 22:10
Looks great guys.
Francis, your vision is anything but pedestrian

Stoked at the thought of a feijoa bush that I can legitimately raid!
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alana1 September 2010 at 16:03
oi meg, i can do webby stuff if you'd like me to. i feel it's probably too late now though. but if you ever need anyone to geek for you all...
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Meg2 September 2010 at 09:37
Thank you, Alana! We just might take you up on your offer. Hope you are well. xx
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About Us

Hello! We are Artist as Family – Zero, Meg, Patrick, Blackwood (Woody), and back in the day, Zephyr. We live in Daylesford, Australia on a quarter-acre permaculture plot, home to our School of Applied Neopeasantry at Tree Elbow University on Djaara peoples' country.

We base our creative practice on our concept of permapoesis, which simply means permanent making or regenerative living – an antidote to disposable culture. We practice an art that participates in what it represents; an art of social warming in an era of global warming. Food ethics and politics are central to our practice. Generating food that brings human and ecological health and global justice is our creative call to arms, within the sphere of the local. We teach a unique skill set of radical neopeasant homemaking, community economy making and other accountable living skills to volunteers called SWAPs (Social Warming Artists and Permaculturists) and teach Permaculture Living Courses (PLCs). We are bloggers, fermentors, writers, public speakers, poets, artists, video makers who also make music, but mostly we're a family who belong to a bloody great community and therefore we're much more than the sum of our parts.

Past and current projects

Artist as Family have conducted a number of fruitful projects in the past including '17 Days' (2009), commissioned by the Lock-up Cultural Centre in Newcastle and 'Food Forest' (2010–), commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, our work was featured in the international anthology of ecological art, 'Art & Ecology Now' (2014), and we wrote the Art of Free Travel (2015) about our 400 day cycle adventure to Cape York and home again in Central Victoria, which was shortlisted for an ABIA in 2016. We continue to give talks to sustainability groups, art schools, university students and community organisations. We teach Permaculture Living Courses (PLCs) from our home, at Tree Elbow University, which is the site for The School of Applied Neopeasantry in Daylesford, Victoria.

17 Days (2009)

'17 Days' involved foraging for anthropogenic waste along the coastline and throughout the city of Newcastle. Day after day we carried out the same simple task of walking or bike riding to collect countless bags of rubbish. We swam, played in the sand, picnicked, rested, communed with locals, gazed (as inlanders) in awe at the sea and picked up other people’s discarded refuse. After 17 days we had amassed a monumental pile of industrial food and drink packaging, which we exhibited at the Lock-up Cultural Centre as simply: the everyday detritus of hypertechnocivility as collected by a family on holiday.

Food Forest (2010–)

'Food Forest' is a public artwork that doubles as a community garden, a work that aims to foreground biodiversity and demonstrate that materially art can be generative, can be a resource unto itself, rather than just an extractor or exploiter of resources to make market desirable products. In other words art can be generative contiguous with ecological functioning. Food Forest is therefore a work that attempts to blur the traditional western line between art and that estranging term ‘nature’.