FRIEZE Magazine , June- August 09 – The Solution
( LINK to online article)
(excerpt from ‘Dublin’, Meave Connolly) 
-The interest in archival modes of presentation in contemporary art over the past few years has also recently been contested by some Dublin-based artists. ‘This Must Be The Place’ (2009), curated by Paul Murnaghan and Sally Timmons, presented works by ten artists’ collectives at the inaugural exhibition of the self-styled, artist-run Irish Museum of Contemporary Art (IMOCA). Located (just like IMMA) outside the city centre, IMOCA is housed within a leaky, disused warehouse rather than a preserved historical landmark. Participants in the show were asked to respond to a specific question – How Do We Think? – in any form other than an archive. The results were startling both in terms of scale and form. Artist collective The Good Hatchery, based in a converted hayloft in a rural area of county Offaly, built a large structure (entitled The Solution, 2009) that referenced Bernd and Hilla Becher’s canonical images of water towers and catalogued some Irish examples, while also dispensing water. Pallas Contemporary Projects presented The Greatest (2009), an electric-powered golf buggy, custom-fitted with leopard-print fur, alongside a quote (‘I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was’) from Muhammad Ali, who was apparently a previous occupant. Visitors could steer this vehicle, like a lone fairground bumper-car, around the warehouse at a fairly rapid pace and the experience of sitting in a seat supposedly once occupied by Ali added a temporal dimension to the visceral sense of spatial dislocation. By invoking a compelling historical example of self-transformation in response to the question posed by the curators, The Greatestopened up new vantage points on a familiar scene with a confidence worthy of Ali himself.