Ormston House invites you to the opening of Get Well Soon (prologue), curated by Lucy Lopez, on Friday, 17 November, 7 – 9pm. Lucy was selected as a guest curator through an open call earlier this year. Get Well Soon (prologue) brings together works by Roo Dhissou, Kyla Harris & Lou Macnamara, Rowena Harris, Bint Mbareh, Harun Morrison (with Satpreet Kahlon), Jamila Prowse, Benoît Piéron, Lorenzo Sandoval, and Rehana Zaman.

A prologue to a long-term project, the exhibition sets intentions for less extractive worlds and draws a connection between human and planetary exhaustion. It borrows its title from a 2020 text by Johanna Hedva, written in the midst of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hedva wrote that we were experiencing what happens “when care insists on itself, when the care of others becomes mandatory, when it takes up space and money and labour and energy” (Hedva, 2020). They chart the revolutionary potential of sickness: “a revolution… might look like hundreds of thousands of bodies in bed, organising a rent strike, separating life’s value from capitalist productivity” (Hedva, 2020).

The long-term project Get Well Soon acknowledges a state of sickness: societal, planetary, interpersonal. In a time where care is in crisis, how can the space of art model new imaginaries and ways of living? How can we work in and of a place of sickness rather than under the illusion of wellness? How can we build rest, community care, and restorative justice into our work?

Get Well Soon (prologue) engages with ideas of pacing: the engineered flows of waterways, the way time is experienced – sometimes measured in spoons – for disabled and chronically ill communities, and the way that daily routines can be imbued with ideas of family and grief. From Rehana Zaman’s exploration of the social currencies and economies of modern agriculture in Arbroath, Scotland to Lorenzo Sandoval’s narrativising of ecological degradation in south-eastern Spain, the works exhibited also acknowledge the impacts of capitalist and colonial extraction on both our bodies and our environments. Sitting with ideas of sickness, burnout, and loss, the exhibition aims to also depict world-building possibilities and joy.

The exhibition will run from 18 November 2023 to 3 February 2024. Admission is free and all are welcome.

Get Well Soon (prologue) is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Limerick City & County Council.