The March of Mount Tambora

The March of Mount Tambora (2017) as part of The Prosperity Project 2014 – 2017

Artist: Jesse Jones
Medium: Unique edition of 2 lenticular structures with hand screen print on acrylic panels and polished stainless steel. Hand silkscreened print by Black Church Print Studio
Dimensions of Panels: 20 122cm x 30.5cm x 0.5cm

The March of Mount Tambora is an artwork that creates a material trace of The Prosperity Project a process of collaborations hosted between artist Jesse Jones and a collective of Irish and International artists, thinkers, musicians and community over 2014 and 2015. The Prosperity Project was grounded in a curiosity to interrogate the assumptions about ‘prosperity’ that grew up during Ireland’s boom years. Aiming to explore notions of prosperity and a global interconnected community around the themes: WANT, LAND, THEM and US, The Prosperity Project culminates in this final permanent artwork, The March of Mount Tambora. The Prosperity Project was commissioned under the Government’s Per Cent for Art Scheme by the Office of Public Works and The Convention Centre Dublin and supported by Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts.

Mount Tambora was a relatively unknown volcano until its eruption in 1815 caused a massive catastrophe worldwide, changing weather patterns and effecting global food production.  This natural catastrophe resulted in a seismic shift in our idea of a shared global interconnected world and had enormous ramifications on cultural, economic and scientific experience through the subsequent decades, even setting into motion decades of food shortages and failed crops in Western Europe which would lead most devastatingly to the Irish famine.

Tambora calls our attention to how environmental and ecological concerns are our collective responsibility and their impacts can affect us all. The artwork uses a satellite image of Mount Tambora from a space expedition in 2009 that was generously donated to the artist for this project by NASA’s Earth Observations experiment and Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Centre.

The structure of the work as a lenticular or dual view image reveals itself to the viewer as they walk through the space, resonating with The Convention Centre Dublin as the site of a constant flow of people. The image appears and disappears, its dark surface aims to mirror the digital screen, our current window to the interconnected world. The image alludes to the natural world in its geological texture, however its aerial view and uncanny puncture of the earth’s surface presents us with a view of the world, which is constantly shifting and unfamiliar.

Credits:
Master Printer, Ray Henshaw Black Church Print Studio
Hazel Burke and David McGinn, Black Church Print Studio
Peter Martin and Liz McElroy, Peter Martin Engineering
Lynnette Moran, Producer Live Collision and Create

Associate artists and collaborators include: Cormac De Barra, Iain Boal, Franco Bifo Berardi: Michelle Browne; Liz Burns; Janyce Condon; Caroline Campbell; Wojciech Doroszuk; Anna Furse; Alexander Galloway; KyoungHee Lee, Niamh McCann; Nina McGowan; MOUTH (Edia Connole, Scott Wilson) and Kyuong So Park.