Aesthetics of Labour 2019
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This entailed a critique of immaterial labour, artist’s work and understanding the gallery as a synthetic space of aesthetic encounter. I commissioned the main gallery to be repaired and painted to its standard colour white. The gallery is rendered invisible or at least recedes into the background; to let the art breathe and maintain its function as a place of abstraction for works of art. This work is usually carried out by the technical crew who ordinarily see this work as maintenance. My intervention brings a visibility to the activity were painting, sculpture and architecture hold a symbiotic relationship to the immateriality of art and the institutional conditions that support such works of art. With the absence of commodities, the ephemeral space of the gallery is never more material, concrete and present. The audience are invited to occupy the space of gallery and consider the production and mediation of exhibition making. This work questions a critical response to its own definition as art as well as its political, aesthetic, economic context.
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This work was on exhibition for seven days, the length of time it took to return the gallery to its artificial space of abstraction. During this period we held a series of roundtables with the public to discuss immaterial labour, artist’s work, and the gallery as a site of constructing meaning.
Informal Economy Ireland 1992
Is a unique copper book of photographs exploring a community of informal economy in Ireland. It focuses on an informal community on the periphery of Dublin who’s source of income comes from recycling car parts, reappropriating waste materials and social welfare. There is a perception that the informal economy is a condition of the global south. In fact informal economy holds a substantive relationship to all function first world economies. Informal communities operate on the margins of society, in the grey zones, shadow economy, on the periphery of state legitimacy and regulation. It is a way of life that is nomadic, fluid and adaptable to the changing conditions of urbanity. It is about humans and things and through acts of reappropriation change their nature. Similarly to making art we are asked to consider our systems of ‘value’. How do we consider labour in aesthetic value, surplus value and economic value in capitalism. See more images
Allegories of Geography 1992
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Is an exploration on the possibilities and limit of representation. The works are not about artistic expression but trying to understand how we create meaning and knowledge of the world around us. Images like words are systems onto themselves but when placed alongside each other create new meanings. The concept of landscape has multiple allegorical possibilities of signification. Depending on one’s position and perspective different narratives options are available.
Viewing the works Soil and Property the viewer is invited to the non-empirical space of words and image that hold arbitrary relations. Usually these fall between the scientific, poetic and the political. Allegorical perceptual determinations shift between scientific analysis, real-estate, military domain and territory or arts aesthetic of horizon and landscape. These values are based on proximity and syntagmatic relations that are always culturally determined within the discourse itself. How do we access and attribute meaning in objects we recognise?
These photographs are not considered as a documentary tool but to look at the indeterminate excesses of language and the relationship between representation and how we construct meaning. See more images
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Gender Conditioning in Irish Society 1985
Is a discourse on societal, cultural, political and religious influences that form gender identities. Participants are invited to participate in an art project through a public advertisement with a gallery venue means of exhibition presentation. Each person is asked to write a short text exploring and reflecting on the issues of gender. With the assistance of the artist each person is invited to make a self-portrait in a location and context of their choosing. Each person’s text is set into their photograph. The assemblage of images explores ideas of image making and representation. Collectively the exhibition creates a space for agency with discordant voices that are conflictual and unresolved narratives on gender construction. See more images