Doug Fishbone’s Please Gamble Responsibly at Crawford Art Gallery

Collection artist and long term collaborator in our Master Class programme, US artist Doug Fishbone’s film and performance work is heavily influenced by the rhythms of stand-up comedy, often examining some of the more problematic aspects of contemporary life in an amusing and disarming way.

This year saw the delayed opening of his first solo exhibition in Ireland, commissioned by the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork. Please Gamble Responsibly is inspired by the ‘ghost estate’ he witnessed in the small town of Carrigtwohill in east Cork, just one of the unfinished housing projects abandoned across Ireland after the 2008 crash and subsequent property bubble burst.

Enter the gallery space and you will be greeted by a large fenced-off concrete wall, where if you manage to breach the gap in the fencing you find yourself in a derelict stage-set version of the original Carrigtwohill estate boarded up, with gloomy lighting and broken windows. Inside the building, Fishbone displays a short film commenting on the themes of the economy, real estate, housing and the rental market through imagery such as steroid pumped chickens, clips of Henry Ford and Vancouver money laundering.

Read the online interview where Doug Fishbone discusses this new work in The Guardian.

Please Gamble Responsibly is on display until 29 August, please visit the Crawford Art Gallery website for further information.