Basia Irland: Repositories

Basia Irland, REPOSITORIES: Portable Sculptures for Waterway Journeys (April 2023) ISBN: 979-8-218-11282-0  
 152 pages, 80 color images, 11 unique site maps 
 ecoartspace publications, edition of 300, hardbound, case binding, smyth sewn, FSC paper Design by Graeme Walker, UK 
 Preface & main text by Patricia Watts, founder of ecoartspace  
 Foreword by Sandra Postel, Director of the Global Water Policy Project & 2021 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate  REPOSITORIES takes us on a series of ecoconscious journeys with an artist who has been intimate with many waterways, and the people, flora and fauna living along them. For over twenty years, Basia Irland has been working with scientists, students, activists and Tribal members along waterways across the US and Canada. With her ongoing art practice to create a deep and meaningful engagement with living bodies of water, the construction of Repositories emerged as a methodology for archiving documentation of research and physical engagements during Irland's riparian journeys. Repositories, the book, documents the construction of the artists' portable sculptures and the objects within which reveal rich stories of rivers through the collection of water data, watershed maps, artworks, plants, and seeds. Irland has journeyed throughout international watersheds and along entire lengths of rivers during her epic durational Gathering of Waters projects. She is an artist, Fulbright Scholar, author, and activist who creates global community-based water projects featured in her books, “Water Library” (UNM Press, 2007) and “Reading the River, The Ecological Activist Art of Basia Irland” (Museum De Domijnen, The Netherlands, 2017). Irland is Professor Emerita, Department of Art, UNM, where she founded the Art & Ecology Program. She has written for National Geographic; had a large retrospective in the Netherlands; been invited to represent the United States in the Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador; and has been featured in over 70 international publications.