Bonnie Ora Sherk – “The Farm”

‘The Farm is a social art work. I think of it as a life-scale environmental performance sculpture with a layering of meanings, metaphors, and actual situations. I see it as art…the naming of The Farm as art is perhaps the most perplexing and problematic idea for the establishment to accept, because the involved elements are diffused and to the conventional eye and mind difficult to grasp.’ – Bonnie Ora Sherk

Initial Site beforehand

Site after the establishment of The Farm

The Farm, detail featuring community participants

John Holden quoted in 1976 in “Alternative to Alternative Arts Spaces” says of The Farm; “Whenever I pass …’ I think, “They did it,” and this inspires me also to attempt the impossible. Whenever  I look down the hill and see it sprawling there in the middle of a concrete wasteland, wrapped up in a roaring freeway, I think that, despite the mindless and relentless expansion of money, technology and power that there still is a human spirit and it still has a chance to prevail.’

Currently there is an exhibition on at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Centre, Ohio. Titled Green Acres: Artist Farming Fields, Greenhouses and Abandoned Lots, including artists Agnes Denes, Futurefarmers, Patricia Johanson, Bonnie Ora Sherk and many more. It claims to be the first museum exhibition solely devoted to the cultivation and distribution of edible foodstuffs.

Two key components to the exhibition hopes to proclaim are those of “freedom” and “community”. It is stated that ‘community’ is explored through the satellite projects located within the wider community and ‘freedom’ pertains to the choices citizens make as well as the artists capacity to act, achieve their goals and involve others in their vision.

These two values, I argue, are those which Sherk helped establish when she first initiated the concept of her “Farm” back in 1974. For more information on the project and Sherk’s ongoing artistic practice, please click here.

Kylie