Founded more than 20 years ago, the collaborative group IRWIN is made up of five artists from Slovenia. The group are also co-founders of the wider cultural collective, Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK). Framed within the constraints and the legacy of a totalitarian regime, IRWIN’s early activities involved appropriating the suprematist symbols of the Eastern Bloc. As self-styled state artists, IRWIN formed embassies and consulates, and crafted passports and other insignia. This act of plagiarism served to undermine the symbols of ideological power, highlighting their paradoxical nature. This equated to what the philosopher and psychoanalytical theorist Slavoj Zizek (a fellow Slovenian) terms over-identification, revealing what he calls the hidden reverse within existing ideological structures. The exhibition at Cornerhouse focuses on three recent works, giving an insight into the group’s activities over years. In addition, an extensive resource area gives visitors the opportunity to learn more about artistic developments in Central and Eastern Europe over the past two decades. IRWIN’s East Art Map is a retrospective (re)construction and mapping of Eastern European Art. Taking its cue from Alfred H. Barr’s seminal diagram illustrating the development of Western abstract art, East Art Map sees IRWIN again appropriating the language of a canon, this time that of art history. The work highlights the seeming (im)possibility of an East European identity in art. Gallery 3 houses Like to Like, which again involves a certain (re)writing of the history of Slovenian art. The work consists of photographs documenting apparent artistic interventions in landscape. These are in fact re-stagings of the activities of the conceptual group OHO, the only remaining evidence of which is meticulous plans and grainy black and white photos. IRWIN’s piece augments this documentation with intriguing colour images, giving the happenings an apparent clarity and weight. The exhibition culminates in The Corpse of Art, an installation that seeks to reconstruct the physical presence of the twentieth century artist Kasimir Malevich who is a recurring reference point in IRWIN’s work. Malevich’s legacy can be read in this context as that of a failed Utopia, whose vision came to appropriated by the communist regime during its rise to power. This lying-in-state again recalls the symbols of totalitarian regimes, and is at the same time a re-enactment of a pre-existing artwork exhibited in Leningrad in 1937. The exhibition is supported by Arts Council England, North West and the Slovenian Ministry of Culture.