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Curating Project:
Sweet Futures (Artist: Sarah Browne), Carlow, Ireland / 2007
Sweet Futures was a project by artist Sarah Browne, which utilised the format of a glossy commercial brochure to intersect several ideas - land-use, consumption, happiness, and locality - around the axis of the sugar industry both in Carlow and internationally.
Maintaining throughout the particular visual language and style of commercial brochures, the publication brought together contributions from a number of artists, writers, academics, and local business and community people, to reflect upon place-specific notions of progress, economics, happiness, desire, memory and change. Sweet Futures developed in the context of the closure of the last sugar processing factory in Ireland (a major employer in the local community), as a direct effect of changing European and global trade, and plugged directly into concurrent local and national discourses.
The publication was launched at a commercial-style 'launch-event' in the foyer of a large newly-built shopping centre in Carlow, and was subsequently distributed for free both locally and nationally.
Sweet Futures was commissioned as part of the Visualise temporary public art programme. The project was curated by Ciarán Walsh.