The Greatest Fizzy Orange In The World (work in progress) is a playful participatory live art work which celebrates alternative cultural food heritages, and fights back against corporate enshittification of what we eat.
The idea centres around the greatest fizzy orange in the world: the much-loved Finches Orange, formerly brewed in my family hometown of Dundalk, Ireland, which I was obsessed with as a child on trips over for Christmas. The closest approximation I can give you is to imagine if pre-sugar-tax Orangina was created from the finest mineral-rich Irish spring water, and was 500% more delicious. Jesus that stuff was lovely, to quote the top Reddit comment on the subject. I’ve been researching its history, from its origins in Dundalk, the closure of the factory in 2004, subsequent buy-outs by series of ever-larger corporate entities and eventually discontinuing at some point since Covid. I want to bring it back.
I’m developing a live art happening / lab / impromptu factory with an open invite to resurrect the fizzy orange we know and love. Pop on a lab coat and hairnet, meet the chemist and learn the science, get slicing oranges, measuring out chemicals, putting the fizz in. Make your own label, adding your stories and memories. At the end we’ll have a party and drink it together. This will be both an entertaining and soul-nourishing space of craft and encounter, of joining together as a community towards a common goal of deliciousness, but also an act of creative refusal, a space of possibility, of imagining alternative systems of food production.
In March 2026 I completed an artist residency hosted by Dundalk’s Mo Chara pub, interviewing over a dozen original makers of Finches including two long-lost family members. With thanks to Finches legends Thelma, Carol, Yvonne, Michael, Louis, Warren, Frank, Derek, Brian, Pauline, Catherine, Leo, Dougie, Tommy, Robbie and Louisa, excellent cousins Lauren, Bernadette and Donal, and special thanks to Vino, Paul, Ciaran and the amazing staff of Mo Chara for being the best residency hosts an artist could dream of.