Ulay, film still from There is a Criminal Touch to Art, 1976 (photographer anonymous). © the artist

Where does art stop and crime begin? This is the question being tackled in an exhibition curated by arts organisation Atopia Projects who have brought together a humorous and poignant selection of artworks that deal with the absurdity of the legal and social ideas of ownership, originality and copyright.

Lifting, which runs from August 25 until September 29 2007 at Peacock Visual Arts in Aberdeen, features some of the finest practitioners of art as theft - artists who are not afraid to explore the realm of the morally uncertain.

Allison Wiese Untitled, 2002-ongoing. Stolen, handmade wooden doorstops. © the artist

Chief among them is the artist Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen) whose classic and daring art intervention of 1976, There is a Criminal Touch to Art, saw him enter the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin and steal Der Arme Poet (The Poor Poet) by Carl Spitzweg (1836).

After clipping the wires of the picture, which was promoted during the Nazi period as an exemplar of good taste, he leaves the gallery with the painting under his arm and jumps into a waiting car. A drive through the city ends at the apartment home of a Turkish immigrant family, which Ulay enters to hang the painting above the mantelpiece. Returning to the street he rings the gallery director, inviting him to come and view the picture.

This famous piece of theft as art, which was filmed for posterity by Werner Herzog's cameraman Joerg Schmitt-Reitwein, earned Ulay a night in gaol and a hefty fine. It remains a classic and very funny episode that ventures boldly into the realm of the ethically doubtful.

Ann Messner, stealing at the summer end sale. © the artist

“Today’s artists can make shocking works, like Damien Hirst, but, for most, such shockwaves become absorbed and legitimized within the protective field of art,” says Ulay.

Most of the artists in the exhibition have chosen to do this type of work to question societal codes, systems of exchange and to critique cultural institutions. The nature of the work has however meant that many of them have been scrutinised by the legal system.

Fragments (2003–04) by Ivan Moudov is comprised of a series of small suitcases. Each opens and unfolds to display selected ephemera stolen over a period of years from various artists’ works. The labelled artifacts, taken from a multitude of galleries and museums throughout Europe, constitute a small-scale portable museum.

The work of Dennis Oppenheim, Violations, 1971–72, Evidence of 153 misdemeanors in violation of Section 484 of the California Penal Code (Petty Theft) is also on display – in the form of 153 hubcaps strewn across the gallery floor.

Dennis Oppenheim, Violations, 1971–72. © the artist

A variety of other stunts are featured through installations, sculpture, photographs and videos. They range from railway station magazines stolen from stores at the point of departure and re-inserted into the racks of equivalent stores at the destination, to Room 28, which saw Joel Ross cut up and pack the entire contents of his hotel room into a series of suitcases .

Lifting is a bold exhibition that might raise all kinds of questions about the legitimacy of art made through illegal means, but it is also an often funny examination of the controversial methods by which artists continue to provoke social change.

A free downloadable PDF publication will be available online at www.atopiaprojects.org from August 24 containing essays exploring the exhibition themes and interviews with all the artists.

There will also be film screenings and workshops to whet the palettes of the curious beginning with a discussion with the curators and artist Scott Myles, on Saturday August 25 at 2.30pm. Admission free.