THEN is a project by acclaimed British artist Adam Chodzko, curated by Aisling Prior. It was commissioned by Breaking Ground, the Per Cent for Art programme for Ballymun Regeneration Limited, from 2006-2007, in various locations across Dublin. It comprised of four works which fantasise future changes to our sense of place, community and time.

Chodzko was invited to work with Breaking Ground as his work blatantly subverts expectations of what public art is, and who it is for. His work is a wryly philosophical look at how an area is read and how individuals present themselves within society.

For this commission, THEN included inter-related works; Around, a quasi sci-fi film, Meeting, with posters advertising an irrelevant meeting in a far off place, M-PATH, the shoe-exchange, whereby residents of two parts of Dublin (Rathmines and Ballymun) donated their unwanted shoes, and Garden.

M-Path invloved 300 pairs of shoes donated through door to door collections as a result of distributing flyers in Ballymun and the Rathmines area. Visitors to the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, participated in M-Path by swapping their shoes for someone else's, which they wore as they walked around the Gallery's exhibitions and permanent collection. The shoes were a form of parade costume for their procession through the exhibition, a lowest common denominator for the art viewer. But it was an imperceptible transformation, how will anyone know whether you are wearing your own footwear or the 'official' second-hand ones?.

Chodzko is interested in confusing people's identities, as he explains:
"We leave our shoes at the entrance to a mosque, a Japanese temple or even to a friend's house who has "special" floors. We swap our shoes in bowling alleys and ice-skating rinks. So what happens when people from across Dublin donate their shoes, which visitors to the gallery will then wear? Will the unfamiliar footwear influence the way you're looked at by others or the way you actually walk through the gallery? How will anyone know whether the shoes you're wearing are your own or someone else's? M-Path is how you end up walking when you're in someone else's shoes!"

Around was a video made on location in Ballymun in October 2007. Using local actors and locations, Around utilises humor and fantasy to present a whimsical version of reality. Using the boundary wall around Ballymun as a starting point, the video appears to be a documentary, set in the future after the final tower has come down in Ballymun. It appears to uncover fragments of a history leading back to the first construction of the wall in the late 1960s.

Meeting involved 100 flyposted posters on Balbutcher Lane in Ballymun. It invited people to a meeting place. 

Garden was a project where documents were given to Dublin City Council's Heritage Department and a property developer in order to negotiate the inclusion of the name Ballymun in a street name within a new and affluent residential area away from Ballymun.

Commissioned by Breaking Ground, the percent for art programme for Ballymun Regeneration Limited, was launched in Ballymun in February 2002 and completed in 2010. Its director and curator is Aisling Prior.

A catalogue for THEN was produced and includes essays by Caoimhin Mac Giolla Leith, Andrew Wilson and Jaki Irvine

Visual Artists' News Sheet January /February 2008 published an interview with Jason Oakley 

A lecture titled, THEN, Before THEN and Next was held at Dublin City Gallery as part of the The Hugh Lane Public Lectures, in January 2008

Adam Chodzko was born in 1965 and lives and works in Whitstable, Kent, UK.
Since 1991 Chodzko has exhibited extensively in international solo and group exhibitions including: Venice Biennale; Royal Academy, London; Deste Foundation, Athens; PS1, NY; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Kunstmuseum Luzern etc. Recent projects include commissions by The Contemporary Art Society, Frieze Art Fair and Hayward Gallery. 

Forthcoming works include new commissions for Museum d'arte Moderna, Bologna and the first Folkestone Sculpture Triennale, (2008). In 2002 he received awards from the Hamlyn Foundation and the Foundation for Contemporary Art, New York. His work is in the collections of the Tate, The British Council, The Arts Council, and international museums and private collections.