First and Last and Always Jonathan Baldock / Amanda Coogan / Michelle Deignan / Nevan Lahart / Flavia Muller Medeiros / Christine Sullivan & Rob Flint Previewed at Axis Ballymun on 7 November 2006. Exhibition open 8 November to 3 December 2006 First and Last and Always featured 7 artists who each visited Ballymun and most of whom created a new piece of work in response to this visit. The exhibition brought together a diverse mix of artists who are interested in the nature of art practice and who either seek to question the way in which artwork is made or who engage with a variety of social and contemporary issues. For some artists, this is achieved through humor or irony, while for others it is conceptual and austere. The show gave a sense of the diversity of approaches employed by contemporary artists responding to everyday life, and presents alternative models of socially engaged practice. As such the show acted as a precursor to the forthcoming Breaking Ground Art in the Life World conference in Spring 2008, which will explore issues of autonomy in art. Jonathan Baldock makes theatrical and darkly humorous fantastical objects and paintings, which are often influenced by traditions of folklore and ritual. At times sinister and unattractive, and at others socially scathing, Baldock’s paintings look at the nature of beauty, celebrity and social perceptions of what art should be. For First and Last and Always, a salon hang of new work underpinned the exhibition in Axis. Amanda Coogan showed Adoration for the first time in Ireland. With strong references to the 14th century Wilton Diptych, currently exhibited in the National Gallery, London, the scene is re-enacted through live performance and accompanied by the benedictus from Mozart's Requiem. Three soloists and a choir join Coogan in worship of a Gucci handbag, exploring consumerism through mime and movement. Set within the beautiful Chapel at Lichfield Cathedral, Adoration is a timely reminder of a society obsessed with celebrity wealth and social status. Michelle Deignan's video works consider her position as an artist in relation to institutions. Often using herself as subject, Deignan's self-reflexive works often question the roles video and photography play in the contextualisation and interpretation of world events. In Red Cheeks , an actor adopts the guise of a TV presenter, and makes a series of speeches to camera at three different locations around London city: outside RTE’s offices at Millbank, The London Irish Women's Centre, and Irish Contemporary Art in Kensington. This narrative calls into question the effectiveness of an artist as a social commentator. The subject matter of Nevan Lahart's work encompasses television, the media, social and political perceptions and the history of art and life. Lahart is interested in the role of the Museum or cultural institution, and frequently uses humor and irony to negate cultural and artistic boundaries. Lahart often uses humble and cheap materials to create expansive installations and here created a new piece for the gallery in Axis. Flavia Muller Medeiros' video work re-appropriates the languages of documentary and interview to subvert the art world language and ideas of the market. Her work occasionally flirts with the political, for example by using speeches by George Bush. Recently nominated for the Becks Futures prize in London, for Breaking Ground, Müller Medeiros responded to Ballymun by creating a work which played on the divide between the safe gallery environment and the real world upon its doorstep, by locating this new work in a shop window in the Ballymun Shopping Centre, leaving only a note in the gallery indicating the whereabouts of her work. Christine Sullivan & Rob Flint's Generator uses the immediate environment of Ballymun, staging an absurdist act of veneration and celebration on a building site adjoining the Axis exhibition space. Assisted by volunteers from the rapidly-changing residential area, Flint and Sullivan created a series of tableaux in which clear helium-filled balloons, piles of building materials, a procession, a suited master of ceremonies, and persistent applause, are deployed in an elegantly-paced montage across two video monitors that is at once joyful and elegiac.