For the second time this year, the window of Temple Bar Gallery has been turned into a mock shop. Recently, Danielle Kraay set up store with cybernetic body parts. Now New York artists McDermott and McGough have "established" a whole food restaurant, or at least that is what the lettering fixed to the gallery's front proclaims. The intention, it seems, is to lure in passers-by who might not usually enter a gallery.
Once inside, visitors will find a series of paintings, the Conspiracy Paintings, and a table covered with various photocopies, books and other publications relating to the paintings. The paintings are woodcut-like and feature illustrations sourced, according to the artists, from a 19th-century agricultural catalogue. Various slogans and texts are integrated with the images.
The texts relate to a number of conspiracies which the pair see as being key to 20th-century life. These range from the Aids Hoax ("a manipulation of information for purposes of genocide") to a work which illustrates the theory that "all disease is caused by worms". As far as it is possible to tell, the artists sincerely hold these beliefs; they also consider ". . . the media of Television, Radio and Newspapers to be the tools of consumer-aimed corporate propaganda . . ."
The Conspiracy Paintings have the character of a catechism rather than a socio-political critique. However att ractive their ideas and images, there is a certain badgering quality to the work. The images are cartoons, but somehow the humour has been expunged. The McDermott and McGough analysis of various 20th-century orthodoxies is thoroughly plotted, but the assault seems so unstinting that it begins to take on the texture of yet another orthodoxy. Or maybe that's just what the conspiracy wants you to think.
Until August 10th.