Ideal State Agency (ISA)

Ideal State Agency was an artist group formed by Colette Lewis, Irene Murphy, and Elinor Rivers, active from 2004 to 2005. The group used humour, absurdity, and playful subversion to explore how social norms, bureaucratic systems, and everyday behaviours shape public life. By adopting the pseudo-identity of a government department, they created interventions that inserted alternative narratives into the public realm, inviting reflection on authority, civic responsibility, and the routines that govern contemporary life. Projects such as Liquid States, a range of refreshments designed to re-energise and detoxify the ‘ideal citizen,’ and the Artist Survival Kit, a tongue-in-cheek guide to navigating the art world, functioned as both satire and invitation—engaging audiences in participatory, critical, and social encounters. The work opens a space for experimentation, dialogue, and reflection, showing how play and absurdity can reveal the structures underlying everyday life.
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Complaints and Compliments Department was a public art intervention in Bishop Lucy Park, a city-centre park in Cork, that explored how everyday acts of expression and communication shape social life. The project invited citizens to participate in a free letter-writing service, composing letters of complaint or compliment to anyone they chose. Participants could have their letters posted, archived, or ceremonially incinerated on site, creating playful and reflective encounters with power, authority, and community. Facilitated by psychotherapist and artist Ger Staunton, the work encouraged engagement, dialogue, and critical reflection, using humor and ritual to reveal the ways social norms and personal relationships are negotiated in public space.

Complaints and Compliments Department was commissioned by Cork Caucus, part of Cork 2005 European Capital of Culture. Cork Caucus was a three-week international cultural forum that explored art, possibility, and democracy, using the city as a platform to examine how art can enact change in specific places.