‘I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant’

Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin Until Nov 27 01-6710073

Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin Until Nov 27 01-6710073

Alan Butler’s work uses the internet as a medium and a source at once, appropriating and remixing film footage and tracing all manner of materials online, even outsourcing the task of painting to professional Chinese studios. Even the title of his show is appropriated. It’s a sentence attributed to a US State Department spokesman, Robert McCloskey, at the height of the Vietnam War. The ever-increasing distance from authenticity and the real is, Butler argues, part of “the inclusive internal logic of capitalism. Everything we consume has already been processed for us, our reactions already predicted and exploited.” To demonstrate that this is so he has given Temple Bar Gallery a radical makeover with a group of multi-faceted works. Butler is a new media graduate of NCAD, and he has since completed an MA at the LaSalle College of Arts in Singapore.

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Abandoned Ireland, Cork Vision Centre @ St Peter’s, Cork Until Nov 25 021-4279925

Aidan Dunne

Aidan Dunne

Aidan Dunne is a visual arts critic and contributor to The Irish Times