Contemporary Artist Anna Keleher visits Sierras Subbeticas GeoparkContemporary Artist Anna Keleher visits Sierras Subbeticas Geopark

Contemporary Artist Anna Keleher has a Masters in Arts and Ecology and collaborates with Geopark experts, people, places and things. She recently journeyed overland from The English Riviera Global Geopark in Devon, UK to spend almost a month in Sierras Subbéticas Geopark, Cordoba bringing with her an infectiously original way of seeing the world and understanding Art.

Keleher has carried out many participatory projects, such as “The Exchange and Ice Age Expedition ¨ both in UK and U.S.A. These works act to potentise the objects of our contemporary age as they are interchanged with Prehistoric ancestors.

She investigates the “ Agency of Things” to discover how ¨inanimate objects¨ exert their influence and so actively shape our worlds.  When scientists are interviewed using her novel technique they take an easy leap into the world of the objects they study to retrieve expert knowledge to share with us, data that we can feel under our own skin; the generous heart of a mushroom sharing nutrients with its host, the fear of a Jurassic ammonite in Subbéticas as a prehistoric predator hunts close by or a geologist´s hammer looms.

This innovative way of interviewing not only results in a fun activity or creative interlude in the working day, but it also represents a very effective way of popularizing science, a very personal way of introducing people in the scientific world.

Anna Keleher is especially interested in Geoparks, in how Geological History has modelled life, the current landscape, our culture and even our idiosyncrasies. During her stay in Sierras Subbéticas she has made sound recordings and taken images to carry out her artistic labour. Mr and Mrs Keleher visited the newly inaugurated Mycological Garden, together with the Director of the Geopark Mr. Baldomero Moreno.

Sierras Subbéticas Natural Park entered the European Geoparks Network in 2006. The different territories that belong to this network collaborate closely, interchanging expertise in order to achieve increased protection, marketing and sustainable use of Geological Heritage.

Following her visit to Spain Anna Keleher is set to visit Marble Arch Caves International Geopark, (Eire/N.Ireland). In the summer of 2011 together with artist/anthropologist Claire Long Cote she will spend 40 days and 40 nights developing a new project (supported by National Lottery through Arts Council England.) called DREAMING PLACE.

Anna Keleher website:
www.annakeleher.com

Speaking as… an ammonite podcast.
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