C O L L E C T
'E M
A L L
2007-8

FC Xisles
This squad of talent exhibited their skills on pitches around the world in the 1970s.  Sometimes forgotten, this project brings to light the personalities and verve of this micro-community with the help of some of the ephemera crafted to promote the Football Club.

the time
Recent arrivals to Ireland worked together to form a micro-community in the form of FC Xisles.  This multi-national, all-star football squad from a past era of big ideas and big hair delighted fans. 

the project
This is a multi-disciplinary, participatory, conceptual art project.  This is the portraiture I have been doing with people and place in transition, but "volumized", adding sculptural, pop cultural, and fictional elements and space.  I am playing with concepts around vintage, scale, cyclical values, and the absurdity of ethnic and racial conflict across time.  

background
This work grew from my childhood encounters with sporting heroes.  I became friends with some of the children of British players imported to play in the North American Soccer League (NASL). 

Also, I collected sports trading cards.  My friends and I traded and shared cards hand-to-hand.  These cards exposed me to a diverse population of sports achievers in what was, for the most part, a local community that seemed segregated along racial lines.

context
Ireland is on its way to becoming a melting pot.  To me, Ireland's process of integrating--and resisting--a diverse population resembles that undertaken in the USA during an earlier era even up to today. 

Many of the players on FC Xisles were forced to leave their home countries.  This project observes some aspects of migration.

exhibition
Multiple work products will be exhibited together.

reveal
If it is not abundantly clear, much of this project is a work of fiction.  I am experimenting with creating the world my subjects populate, a departure from some of my past work which in my practice I tried to record more than shape.