DYSFUNCTIONAL is a new way to think about art.

DYSFUNCTIONAL knows art is what happens when artists engage with the world.

DYSFUNCTIONAL knows that too much time, too many words are spent demarcating where painting, poetry or sculpture end, and where utility or function begin.

DYSFUNCTIONAL knows these to be bound up together. To separate a single strand is to disassemble the whole.

This is not a conversation around art, or a negotiation of what constitutes art, or an exercise in labelling art - DYSFUNCTIONAL is art.

Art is that which an artist makes. Art is not born into a specific category.  It is oblivious to categories. An artist can leap between modes and media as they see fit.

It is impossible to separate the dancer from the dance.

Good art demands an emotional response. It is a synapse running from one living thing to another. That is its purpose: intelligence and life in dialogue. It should move you. It is not necessary that you know how, or to what purpose, you are moved.

What you experience here is living and vital and sensate. Each piece appeals directly to your nerves, to the mind, to its environment, and to every piece of art made in human history. This includes the setting - these astonishing buildings.

These things are born of the artist’s skill, and that of the artisans with whom they collaborate. Skills handed-down through generations. Skills reforged for the modern era. Skills honed over a lifetime of labour, application and experience.

Be moved by them.