  We present a direct experimental investigation of the thermal ordering in an
artificial analogue of an asymmetric two dimensional Ising system composed of a
rectangular array of nano-fabricated magnetostatically interacting islands.
During fabrication and below a critical thickness of the magnetic material the
islands are thermally fluctuating and thus the system is able to explore its
phase space. Above the critical thickness the islands freeze-in resulting in an
arrested thermalized state for the array. Determining the magnetic state of the
array we demonstrate a genuine artificial two-dimensional Ising system which
can be analyzed in the context of nearest neighbour interactions.
