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The combinations and variations within the space will serve to activate and invigorate the artworks. The concept of the ‘Detournement’  (A term defined by Asger Jorn and Guy Debord as “the reuse of pre-existing artistic elements in a new ensemble”) is central to this exhibition. The dialogue between the permanently installed artworks and the temporary events will encourage/invite the production of new interpretations & will also allow for prolonged enjoyment of the individual artworks. This coupling of permanent & temporary art forms constitutes a departure from the static dynamic of the conventional exhibition.                                                                            

-Pádraic E.Moore November 2006

Although my curatorial practice is deeply informed by my literary input and output I am compelled, time and again to express my vision through visual art. The fact that I approach artistic production from a basically literary perspective means that text and literary references feature heavily within my work.

-Pádraic E.Moore November 2006

In a world in which the concentration of power is so great and the workings of that power so obscure, many people are inclined to think that their personal decision does not matter and therefore, they surrender to the system. This exhibition-and Art production in general can and should be a way of existing idiosyncratically against and within the system.

-Pádraic E.Moore November 2006

“Work in the midst of everyone! For everyone and with everyone!

-Work for Life!”                                                                    -Alexander Rodchenko.February.1921

“We, the proletarians of the brush! Creator martyrs, Oppressed artists! We-are the inhabitants of cold attics and damp cellars. We, who carry the blazing fire of creativity walk hungry and barefoot. We, whose position is worse than the oppressed workers, for we-both works for our subsistence and create our art at one and the same time, We who are cooped up in kennels, often without either paint or light or time for creative work. Proletarians of the brush, we must come together. We must organise a “Free association of oppressed artist-painters” and demand bread, studios and the right to exist…”          

  -Alexander Rodchenko.February.1921

“Limitation to specialised work is a condition of any valuable work in the modern world”

‘Asceticism & the Spirit of Capitalism’Max Weber

“Art is sufficiently useful and should not dilute itself to nothing in order to justify itself”

-Grant Kester via Pádraic E.Moore 

“For some the exhibition is the space of construction and production. For others it is the site of discursive contribution. For all it must be the platform for enthusiasm, experimentation and exhilaration!”

-Pádraic E.Moore November 2006

“The problem of doing nothing is that you have to endure this nothing. So you acquire a capacity that immediately rises above the childlike qualities of man, which is the tendency to always do something; to survive, or at any rate-to live with a purpose”.

-Mario Merz (b.1925) Interviewed by Hans Ulrich Obrist.2003

“Like all other forms of social consciousness art is an expression of social existence, an ideological reflection of the ever-changing forms which the struggle between social man and nature assumes in the process of human development. Art however is more than a mere reflection of social reality. It is at the same time and even primarily- a Revolutionary agent for the transformations of how one can deal or function within that reality”

-“Content and Form in Art”1935 Frances Klingender (1907-1955)

Recognising that the revival of a utopian vision of the future is perhaps more necessary today than ever it has been before Thomas Hirschhorn decries apathy and passivity stating that “the democracy in which we are all living too often compromises with the short term advantages and arranges with authority and power”. The installations, pavilions and monuments by Hirschhorn are ultimately the physical analogue for his protestation that what is considered to be the most effective political solution is ineffective. It would seem that Hirschhorn, like Nicholas Bourriaud shares in the belief that “the role of the work of art is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realities but to actually provide ways of living and models of action within the existing real”.

-Pádraic E.Moore April 2006

“Perception of Ideas leads to new ideas”

-Sentences on Conceptual Art 1969,Sol LeWitt. (b.1928)

“What is termed culture reflects but also prefigures the possibilities of organisation of life in a given society. Our era is fundamentally characterised by the lagging of revolutionary political action behind the development of modern possibilities of production which call for a superior organisation of the world…The revolution in everyday life, breaking it’s present resistance to the historical (and to every other kind of change), will create the conditions in which the present dominates the past and the creative aspects of life always predominate over the repetitive”

-From “Situationist International” 1957.Guy Debord. (1931-94)

El Lissitzky’s comment that the massive Dresden Kunstaustellung of 1925-6 was like “a zoo where viewers are roared at by a thousand different beasts at the same time” indicates the necessity to construct a unique, memorable and provocative space, which was at the same time functional and practicable. The space and the hang could not be a gimmick but had to invite, excite and most importantly, the spectacle had to physically and mentally “make the man Active”.

 -P.Moore (with quotes from El Lissitzky) September 2006