Exhibitions

Dates: May–July 2004

Plastic Casino is a house of grotesque aesthetic gimmicks, an imaginary dystopia littered with the products of cultural degeneration. The artworks bastardise prominent formal orthodoxies of competing 20th century ideologies to produce a collection of synthetic hybrids, like the dysfunctional offspring of social and economic engineering. The exhibition links the main gallery on St. Margaret’s Place with an off site semi-derelict warehouse on Osbourne Street.. The latter is a site earmarked for corporate and lottery funded redevelopment and provides a bespoke context for the exhibition. Collectively, the resulting hybrids and the modified warehouse space will create an environment that pivots in the dichotomy of a utopian, modern gallery and a nihilistic, seedy gambling club. Plastic Casino is the pessimistic study of a sceptical subculture beneath the glossy facades of liberal cultural regeneration, aided by the profits of chaos and chance.