This ongoing series of over 70 paintings entitled Moment of Surrender is based on a script by Lalor, tells a story about a single father in his early thirties and his two young children trying to make ends meet in a post economical crash, in an almost unrecognizable Dublin.  The idea of moving becomes a constant element in Lalor’s work, whether it being through choice or through desperation.

The paintings in cinematic form trace how the young father is brought to the point where he is about to abandon his two young children to the Irish state in 2016. The broader social and political crisis of the property crash intersects with the crisis of subjectivity and memory of this figure.  The paintings describe interior and exterior spaces, architectural settings devoid of human presence but also interiors of an ‘affective’ kind, deeply embedded in the emotional and political landscape of the central protagonist.  The works explore the complexities of how public space and architecture confront personal politics, and move into more intimate private terrain often ordinary disregarded spaces.