|  Crapola is Phillip Roth and Phillip Guston’s view of the American junkier side- one that starts with Burger vans and ends with trash heaps. For Guston and Roth the prime example of crapola was Richard Nixon- this led to Guston’s repeated characterizations of Nixon, often appearing with cock and balls for a face.
In the "crapola" or this degraded and overlooked area of popular culture, both figures located aesthetic possibilities, imagery, they thought, could liberate their work from the stranglehold of the prevailing canons in literature and art. Guston and Roth both knew that, like the commonplace objects depicted throughout the writing of Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett, their shared literary interests-these diminished pockets of American culture could be mined as potent means to move their work beyond any self-perceived impasse. Red Wire has responded to Roth and Guston’s vision of Crapola- in our very own building we had a junkier, seedier, grimier side of what we ourselves had already created- this side lay in our much underused basement. Red Wires ethics and beliefs have played a central role in its development, our D.I.Y attitude extends from our group through to our work, which often has a visible rawness- and now into our new space. Obvious initial reactions to spaces that are occupied by graffiti, dirt, awful smells and thousands of flies would be to white wall the space and install your exhibition as normal- here we have tried to work with what we’ve got. | 
