The Artist’s Armada is a curatorial project by Anne Mullee that united works by artists working with boats, rafts and watercraft; whether building, sailing or otherwise engaging with the element of water as voyagers and explorers. It took place at Dublin’s Grand Canal Dock, a confluence of waterways serving the interior and coastal areas of our island nation. 

The Artist’s Armada offered an intersection for ideas to collide and exchange, sparking new dialogues and reclaiming this site for artistic endeavour. Here the artists will formed a flotilla of watercraft – the ‘Armada’- and gathered for informal and structured discussion.

For the Artists’ Armada iteration of Floating Dialogues, my modular  raft was  anchored in the Grand Canal Dock, where it hosted a dialogue between myself and Dr Patrick Bresnihan exploring ideas of WATER AS A COMMONS.

Dr Bresnihan is an Irish Research Council post-doctoral scholar in Maynooth University, Ireland. His research examines the different ways ecological crises are understood and the politics that arise from that.

His first book, Transforming the Fisheries: Neoliberalism, Nature and the Commons (University of Nebraska Press) is due to be published in early 2016. His current work looks at the politics of water and water infrastructure and he has just returned from a research project in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

See more on the project here: https://theartistsarmada.wordpress.com/