Calendar of The Harvest

As part of the IMPACT 12 Printmaking Conference in Bristol, the STATE OF PRINT invited me to respond to their “Contested Spaces: Rights of Soil” brief. This artist book as calendar reflects on the origins of the term “Boycott”, coined close to where I grew up in Ireland.

Artwork statement:
In 1878 The Irish National Land League was formed to help poor tenant farmers and to abolish landlordism in Ireland. The term “Boycott” was coined after the organisation targeted one Captain Charles Boycott. Boycott was ostracized by the organisation and local community after he attempted to evict tenant farmers for refusing to pay their rent. After his workers and servants quit, a relief expedition was formed to save his harvest. His harvest worth £350 was saved by the expedition, an expedition which cost £10,000.

While all versions are connected to timelines, the boycott is an act which in action can vary dramatically. A boycott can reside invisibly within the everyday as an individual over the course of their lifespan silently boycotts a business, while simultaneously knowing that their ethics driven Boycott may have no financial effect on the business, or in the case of event which coined the term, it can be a collective effort set to the calendar of a harvest and the spoiling of the harvest’s prophets within that timeline. The calendar which houses the many timeline versions of the boycott is essential for any civilization that “needs to measure periods for agricultural, business, domestic, or other reasons”. The word is derived from the Latin calendarium, meaning “interest register” or “account book”.

A printed matter calendar is an identical multiple, that looks to the future, purchased to be personalised, with boxes to be filled in with events that have not yet happened. This “interest register” exists within the “account books” of commerce where it is ironically vulnerable to the timeline of the year it houses.
As part of the IMPACT 12 Printmaking Conference in Bristol, the STATE OF PRINT invited me to respond to their “Contested Spaces: Rights of Soil” brief. This artist book as calendar reflects on the origins of the term “Boycott”, coined close to where I grew up in Ireland.

“Calendar of The Harvest” is an identical multiple, that does not look to the future but reflects on the past. It contains no months, weeks, or days, the only reference to a year is the name of the stories’ protagonist. Returning to the roll of “account book”, the ink of the “interest register” timeline which points forward to the harvest’s profits has been boycotted, only 3.5% of each identical inside page holds printed ink, the same ratio difference which occurred between the harvest profits and relief expedition costs. The 300gram pages are difficult to navigate, the only printed forms visible are the words “Boycott” (The stories’ protagonist), “Captain” (The title bought for him by his family) and “Boycott” (The transitive verb), positioned over what was once a timeline and is now the faint remanence of diagonal crop lines. Although identical each diagonal line is visually inconsistent as the digital printer struggled to print with such vector image restrictions.