Liar's Poker. Exhibition, The Lab, Dublin, 2013.
Curatorial Statement by Emer Lynch
(1) Rapid expansion of credit
(2) Rising property prices
(3) Falling property prices
(4) Confidence evaporating
(5) The crisis erupts
Under these five labels, Ireland’s monetary story since 2002 can be summarised. This is realised exactly so in a document published by the European Commission in 2012 entitled Ireland’s economic crisis...how did it happen and what is being done about it?
Irish media platforms have also asked precisely this question in the course of reporting on these five stages of the nation’s history. Radio talk shows in particular have provided opportunity for you, me and Joe Soap to pose questions about individuals who abused influential positions in property developing, economic forecasting, bank managing, politics etc. Fuelled by the visual anonymity of the phone call, members of the public have willingly placed themselves on a national podium of discussion, and topics on reckless actions by persons in power have voyaged both parallel and perpendicular to fact.
Liar’s Poker alters discernment of fact by permeating the context of museology with methods of media dissemination. Undertaken by The Cashen Trust (a not-for-profit creative research organisation founded in 2012), their mission is to actively explore myths that have been built around moments, places and people in Irish history.
Working within the framework of the institution, The Cashen Trust presents an artefact comprised of appropriated conversations. What is observed and heard from the glass case questions the ethics of mediated information. Both linguistic and of matter in format, the constructed forms of communication are queasy-making. This is key to what The Cashen Trust is and what they do.