PROJECT OVERVIEW
The Sam Wills and JD Rooney Bequest Commission is a long-term public art project unfolding over multiple lifetimes. In its current form, it comprises three components: a legally binding Will, an Open Call document, and a sculptural work on The Bath Green in Moville, County Donegal (yet to be installed).
Rooted in the act of bequeathing, the project establishes a framework for an evolving, infinite sequence of artworks, in which a new piece will replace the original sculpture one year after the last of the founding artists has passed. A core theme is the use of time as a medium – reframing collaboration across generational timelines, inviting the participation of artists who are likely not yet born. The project engages with themes and ideas of colonial ghosts, legacy making, memorialisation, collective memory and symbolic power.
The Open Call document serves as an invitation for artists of the future to respond to the project and as a vehicle in the present to invite the speculative. Written to be activated posthumously, it ensures that the Bequest Commission continues to evolve and reincarnate itself through future generations. Similarly, for this project I have produced My Last Will and Testament, which provides the legal framework and administrative instructions to ensure the project is managed after our death. Lastly, there will be the installation of a sculptural work on The Bath Green in Moville, which serves to materialise the project for the public while also marking the first iteration in the long-term sequence of works to occupy the site.
The project is conceptualised for, and in dialogue with, The Bath Green, a piece of land acquired by Robert Montgomery, born in Moville in 1809. Montgomery built his wealth and career in India as Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab under the British East India Company and later the British Raj. His colonial role encompassed law enforcement, tax collection, and the management of administrative infrastructure, embedding British hegemony in the region.
The Bath Green, once part of the Montgomery family estate and later gifted to the public, still carries markers of this history in a commemorative plaque and the nearby Montgomery Terrace. These traces of symbolic power, transposed back to Moville through the park and street naming, recast colonial wealth as benevolence, embedding authority into the everyday landscape through naming and commemoration. By situating itself within this terrain, The Sam Wills and JD Rooney Bequest Commission disrupts inherited narratives of ownership and remembrance, creating space for alternative forms of legacy to unfold - keeping memory active, fluid, and alive over time.
Though conceived for The Bath Green, the project is not fixed to it. The Will anticipates the possibility of future displacement, ensuring the work can adapt, migrate, and continue across generations. This flexibility allows the project to remain responsive to shifting contexts while maintaining its core gesture of renewal.
