Land’s End

For this project, the group traveled to Cornwall, England, only to discover that the precise "end of the world" was subject to dispute. Two adjacent points had been designated as such at different times: Cape Cornwall and Land’s End, just five kilometers apart. While Land’s End boasted all the tourist infrastructure confirming its status as an official site, Cape Cornwall, the original extreme westerly point of England, epitomized the artists' imagined image of the end of the earth, untamed by official delegation. Appropriating contested ends, the group chipped off rocks from each location, displaying them alongside documentation of their heist. This act not only questioned the arbitrariness of location but also revealed the inherent biases in delimiting space. By exhibiting the stolen rocks, Mahony Collective blurred the distinction between the real and imagined ends of the earth, highlighting the complexity of spatial representation. The project engages with concepts of naming, site specificity, and the construction of knowledge, challenging the authenticity of tourist landmarks and the credibility of the information surrounding them.

text excerpts by Matthew Post, Seeing Sight