Projects is the mercifully enigmatic title of IMMA's group show of younger artists from around the world. Rather than showing together as part of some orchestrated thematic statement, these artist are brought together, it seems, simply because they produce interesting work. If there is one thing that connects the work (other than the fact that this is the first time that these artists have shown in Ireland), it is a pleasurably sarcastic sense of humour. Everything here is swaddled in a smirk, from Ellen Gallagher's vast frames of microscopic hieroglyphics, to Wolfgang Tillman's photoworks, which transform his ordinary friends into fashion objects, or Ceal Floyer's installation, in which an old-fashioned turn-table plays a recording of an old-fashioned slide machine.
Turner-prize nominee, Gillian Wearing, has built her reputation on work that often sounded like pranksterism. Her 30 minutes of video interviews with troubled souls kitted out in fright wigs and Neil Kinnock masks, Confess All On Video. Don't Worry You'll Be In Disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian . . . gives a fair account of the artist's semi-documentary field of investigation, even if a new monochrome video projection sees her heading off, stumblingly, in a more self-consciously fine art direction.
Paul Ramirez's big projects move a lot of matter to make small points. In the courtyard, for example, he has built an enormous, but primitive radio telescope, for the purpose of delivering sounds he claims are "extraterrestrial" on a small radio in the interior. His energy is better spent on a series of kites, built by the artist in order to fly a camera into the air and take bewildering self-portraits of the artist far below. Yukinori Yanagi's, Wandering Position, also shows cause and effect in juxtaposition. Alongside his large, wiry red line drawing, he has mounted a video screen, showing the origins of its strange, obsessive patterning. To create the picture, Yukinori followed, with the aid of a red crayon, the winding trek of an ant. Ants also play a part in the artist's USSR, an ant farm in the form of a series of interconnected red sand maps which the ants have distorted with their digging. In Yukinori's global network, it seems, the great bears of the old world will inevitably be obliterated by the busy, heedless ants.
Closes October 12th.