Camphill Grangemockler exhibit opens at Meredith Keith Gallery

(Press Release)

Meredith Keith Gallery will be exhibiting Molly Crealock’s photography series Camphill Grangemockler: Portrait of a Farm from May 6 to 31, 2011. The opening reception will take place on Friday, May 6^thfrom 6-9pm.

 
The series is an investigation into daily life at a community-based organic farm, Camphill Grangemockler, in County Tipperary, Ireland. Camphill is part of a larger organization of communities of the same name, based on the philosophy of Rudolph Steiner. Steiner viewed the farm as a ‘whole organism’: a self-sustaining eco-system in which all components must be working in harmony in order to sustain plant, animal and human life. Inhabitants of this community, inspired by the mission of mutual cooperation, live in a communal house, and work together in the garden, on the farm, in the weavery and in the kitchen. In 1999 Molly Crealock volunteered at Camphill; she returned 10 years later during the community’s twentieth anniversary to make this photographic study of a place and a people that she had often wished to revisit. It was her intention to reveal the innate appeal of the environment, working within the context of landscape and portrait photography with images of fields, livestock and farmers working the land.  Due to the pastoral subject in these images, it may take time for the viewer to realize that this is a unique community whose permanent residents are adults with special needs, people who live with a variety of intellectual challenges. In this series, each resident is photographed in the context of their living environment; they can simply be seen not as “disabled”, but as farmers, gardeners, artisans and active members of a culture. In this way, Crealock directs the viewer to take from this exhibition a portrait of the farm’s fabric – the permanent residents, the animals and the land that comprise Camphill Grangemockler.