NO RESPECT asked artists to respond to projects by international artists in Ireland which were never successfully realised. Projects referenced include Jean-Claude and Christo's attempt at wrapping the pathways of St Stephen's Green, James Turrell's Sky Garden land art project in Cork, and Richard Serra's monumental steel sculptures.

The resulting exhibition was located in a number of Dublin city locations and comprised of a series of temporary public art works including sculpture, video and sound works. The six artists selected for the project created a new work based on a failed project.

NO RESPECT aimed to revisit public art projects by famous artists which failed to win approval by the authorities and/or the general public. Working in the public realm has never been easy for artists, both practically and politically. Public authorities and audiences often rightly question the assumed right of the artist to impose art on people because, for example, the perception of it being 'good for them'.

NO RESPECT is interested in the possibility of failure viewed as the opportunity for an aesthetic of invisibility, of the elusive and ephemeral. The curatorial concept was to present a series of perplexing situations that disturbed the familiar and comfortable conventions of presentation and interaction between a work of art and its public.

As Cherry Smyth wrote in the catalogue essay, "failure drives the engine of this NO RESPECT exhibition: each artist has been invited to respond to a public artwork that failed to fully materialise in Ireland and propose one of their own that plays with ideas of elusiveness and temporality. Public art remains provisional until it is installed."

There were a variety of functional ambivalences built into the exhibition as we want to exhibit work that is temporary or moreover provisional in its objecthood. These are intended to create hybrid situations that merge forms, contents and contexts through engaging the history in the present, forcing provocative and marginal positions between audience, artist and sites.

The artists: Mel Jordan and Andy Hewitt (England), Ronan McCrea (Ireland), Alan Phelan and Jane Speller (Ireland), Oreet Ashery (Israel), Vanessa O'Reilly (Ireland), Karen Henderson (Scotland).

An information area with site map was installed in the lobby of Project, East Essex Street.

NO RESPECT is an artist-led group based in Dublin which organises exhibitions and publications.

Funded by The Arts Council and Dublin City Council.
We are also grateful for the assistance and support of the Sculptors' Society of Ireland, the Arts Council of England, Project Arts Centre, Fire Station Artists' Studios and the Arts Projects Network.