'Taking Place'
James Ó hAodha
10th - 21st May 2010
From Monday 10th of May, artist James Ó hAodha occupied Exchange Gallery, using it both as a working space and a base for a series of interventions being conducted in the streets around Exchange. Appropriating commercial waste materials left in the street for collection, Ó hAodha erected barricades in the exhibition space which were disassembled and reassembled over the period of the occupation, playing with visibility and accessibility of the space from without.
These waste objects populate the street-scape in mass on a daily basis, taking an ambiguous position in public space. In this they provide a unique material in-point to the particular economy and circulation of which they are part. Working tactically within the timescales and practicalities of placing and collection, the artist reinvested these objects with a more tangible communal value and sought to activate the political potential of their 'taking place'. The interventions were centred around the tools of resistance, meeting and organisation, teaching and dissemination of information, in an attempt to suggest or prompt a return of these tools to common use.
Exchange Gallery was reopened to the public on Friday May 21st from 7pm-10pm as site to a temporary café/barricade with outdoor seating, serving free beverages during exhibition opening hours.
Alongside the main exhibit, the artist continued to conduct interventions in public space including:
Monday 24th May at 6.30
No Fixed Abode reading group was held within a temporary fortification in the environs of Exchange. Discussing '3.1: Metamorphoses of the Composition of Capital' from Hardt and Negri's Commonwealth
Friday 28th May at 6pm
Artist's talk facilitated in a makeshift parliament chambers constructed in the streets near Exchange
