Project Space at ECA

‘Everyting Abu Upsets Me’

Four girls with one task – to plan a show in two weeks, with four days to install.

Acknowledging our limited time frame, myself, Diana Bechmann, Terri McSweeney and Helen McCartney decided that the best thing for it was to produce a show that would allow us to have the most ‘craic’. Unfortunately, this meant that we would not be putting our own work into the show… Mostly because it would have meant that we needed to find a link between our four very different practices in order to create a cohesive show - and the coffee was limited at the time.

We diverged on topic and discussed the anxieties that surrounded ‘being’ an artist when leaving art collage. How do we measure success? How do we live up to the expectations of the media and culture? How will we survive? There was only one reasonable answer for the project space exhibition.. To make a fake ‘successful’ collective that had reached their peak in the 1990’s and therefore present a twenty year retrospective as our exhibition.

The show would include a preview of the collectives’ up and coming documentary, magazine covers and costumes of certain personas from within the group. We became good friends with the YBA’s, won the 1996 Turner Prize (sorry Douglas Gordon), went to parties, were filthy rich and generally became the ideal celebrity artist that the media had created as being ‘successful’. Creating individual personas allowed us to gain a small insight into the lives of the stereotypical successful artist. We also wanted to present the idea of 'success' and expectation.

We presented the art piece which won the collective the prestigious Turner Prize award… and placed it in the corner of the room on a small TV. The only piece of ‘art’ in the show and we placed it behind our all inclusive celebrity scope.

We feel the show was 'successful'!

Preview of 'Everyting Abu You Upsets Me' up and coming documentary, 2016.