Into my world: recent British sculpture

This exhibition presented an overview of current sculptural practice in Britain, presenting nine emerging and mid-career artists. ‘Anyway That You Want Me’, developed from ‘All Of The Known Universe’, was the first major work of Ireland’s to be exhibited in USA.

The work utilized the strategy of arrangement and organization of objects, a continued focus of Ireland’s artistic practice. The work was generated by sending a request for a series of items; concrete blocks, tree trunk, scaffold, drum container, which would be arranged on Ireland’s arrival. Nothing was made prior to arriving in USA. This strategy enabled a certain deferment of aesthetic choice of materials and enabled Ireland to more explicitly explore the use of standardized forms. This process foregrounds the premise of the category of the object, rather than its representational properties. The tension in the work is then delivered through the fact that it is arranged to suggest that it is a representation.

‘Anyway That You Want Me’ refers to the request for a work similar to ‘All Of The Known Universe’ for the show and the strategy of production, whereby a recipe is created by the artist but the resolution is necessarily collaborative and pragmatic. Through the definition of these terms, the work takes a critical stance that looks at the forces at work in our need to define, frame, format and package, as part of an ongoing exploration of space and territory from an aesthetic and art historical position.