Overlook Eamon OʼKane Overlook Eamon OʼKane Selected lense based works 2000-2004

Orchard Gallery, Triskel Arts Centre, Cork Galerie Schuster + Scheuermann, Berlin Overlook DVD projection, 3 mins 2002-2003 Overlook As Berlioz’s menacing Symphonie Fantastique an endless duplication of the phrase “All work and no ment via an antiquated lift. By mirroring the image, dimensional representation of the viewer in three- plays out over the opening sequence of The Shining play makes Jack a dull boy”) and the circuitous route not once but twice, O’Kane disorientates us, so that dimensional space. Again, we don’t exactly feel as (1980), director Stanley Kubrick pursues his subject around the hotel, filmed using Kubrick’s notorious the image literally folds back into itself and we are though we are at the spot where we find ourselves. (the writer Jack Torrance and his family) towards their steadicam – through identical corridors and doors thrown from one point of entrance to another. It seems especially in his exploration of the Bourbaki mountain retreat. Despite the spectacular Montana and lifts and finally around and around the hotel’s Panorama (a 19th century panoramic painting housed scenery, surf filmmaker Greg MacGillivray denies the frozen maze. “The building I was staying in,” O’Kane recalls, “was in Lucerne ), O’Kane is less intrigued by the formal spectator a sublime or omnipotent viewpoint, choos- occupied mainly by elderly people who seemed accomplishment of the painting and more by the ing instead to sweep behind, up and over Torrance’s Monday Through Sunday is not simply a compliment trapped within the building and were confined to experience of the visitors in relation to the painting car as it makes its way along the mountain road to Kubrick, however, but rather an embodiment of the going up and down in the lift either to the common in its own museum. In turn, by layering the images and towards their fateful destination – The Overlook dichotomies which run throughout O’Kane’s entire room, laundry room or to get rid of rubbish”. O’Kane’s and creating a cacophony of sound, he denies an Hotel. Isolated at the foot of the mountain, the hotel practice: the utopia and dystopia of the rural retreat; evocative accompanying soundtrack of jangling keys, omnipotent viewpoint. Here O’Kane is pointing to the appears both imposing and imposed upon. It is of the distant view which resists closer inspection; doors sliding opening and banging shut and laundry artifice or illusion of representation. Just as the interi- course central to Stephen King’s original novel – a civilisation and its antithesis; artifice and the natural turning around-and-around is also heard to fold back ors of The Overlook Hotel was constructed at Elstree brooding presence which seems to detach the writer order. O’Kane employs a diverse range of media, into itself, so that this sense of confinement is height- Studios in England, the establishing shots filmed in from civilisation, engulf him in its empty, labyrinthine playing one material or technique off against another ened by reoccurring sounds heard backwards and Montana and the exterior shots filmed in Oregon, so interior, and ultimately leads him to his death. The to explore the full potential of these concerns. forwards. The viewer is faced with a barrage of mul- the panorama of Bourbaki and O’Kane’s representa- establishing shots of Kubrick’s film serve then to tiple entries and exits and the confusion engendered tion of the panorama are constructed fictions. introduce the film’s nemesis and to place us firmly The mental and physical process of disorientation, by the multiplicity of partial views seems to suggest within its grip and he draws upon the rich literary the oscillation between subject and object and the a potential occupant’s/prisoner’s psychological con- Whilst these works certainly indicate O’Kane’s sheer associations of the ‘house in the woods’, to create a implication of death, surge vividly through O’Kane’s dition. enjoyment of the formal acrobatics of stereoscopic sense of the uncanny from the start. recent videos for example. These works seem locat- filming and digital manipulation, and link his practice ed somewhere beyond sleep, between fiction and Architectural historian Anthony Vidler has described most closely with the cinematographic accomplish- It is this conjunction of isolated beauty and impend- reality. They encourage viewer, physical context and such an effect in relation to the architectural uncanny, ment of The Shining, it is perhaps his work made in ing danger that lies at the heart of the work of Eamon represented space to draw near to one another and comparing it to the condition of schizophrenia. Here Co. Donegal that reveals the true nature of O’Kane’s O’Kane. His tribute to The Overlook is most clearly move apart. Their subject is estrangement, unease he suggests, in response to the question “where are persistent interest in Overlook. embodied in Monday Through Sunday, a looped – the Uncanny. you?”, the schizophrenic response would be, “I know video sequence of still images of the exterior of the where I am, but I do not feel as though I’m at the The House in the Trees and Plantation document hotel from the film, inter-cut with the names of days of The Uncanny or unheimlich, according to Freud’s spot where I find myself.” The absence of ‘anchors’ his family home, a 17th century plantation house the week. Echoing The Shining’s screen titles (which definition of 1919, is invoked through the recogni- in O’Kane’s work (whether human figures or legible owned by an officer in the English army. Just as the progress from months to days to hours as Jack tion that something is missing, something familiar exit points) thus induces a condition similar to that of ‘Overlook’ in the hotel name might be read metaphori- Facing page: nears his catastrophic descent into psychosis), here that has suddenly become de-familiarised, as if in schizophrenia or spatial phobia. cally as referring to the ‘overlooking’ of the site’s guilty Stills from The Shining by Stanley Kubrick

the days are rolled out week-by-week-by-week, the a dream. This nightmarish quality is heightened in past (it was built over an Indian burial ground), so the This page: days and nights marked by exterior shots of the hotel O’Kane’s video work through the propensity of the Certainly O’Kane’s exploration of the panorama O’Kane house is cast as a place of mystery, of pos- Stills from Overlook 2003 one-after-the-other-after-the-other. The sequence double. For example, in Overlook (filmed whilst through works such as Panorama Spectator and sible fear and confrontation through the figure of the Detail from Jeff Wall’s Restoration, trans- mimics Kubrick’s device of repetition: from Jack’s O’Kane was on residency in Tilburg, Holland), he Panorama Interface explore this further through soldier, the frantic movement through the wood and parency in lightbox, 1993 denouement (the revealing that his ‘novel’ is simply records a mundane journey from entrance to apart- the formal possibilities/impossibilities of the two- the mirroring of the exterior of the building.

5 6 The House In The Trees DVD projection, 25 mins 1994-2003 O’Kane recognises the forest or wood as a space 19th Century such as Barbizon in the Forest of which has been historically formulated as a place of Fontainebleau, the notion of Villegiature (literally mystery, outside culture, and thus, a figment of our meaning ‘deprived of the city’) has impelled artists imagination. Cultural theorists have long recognised and writers to seek out the rural idyll as a site of crea- the forest as a potent metaphor for the antithesis of tivity. Worpswede can be understood as a sequel to civilisation. In Grimm’s Fairy Tales, it is the forbid- Barbizon, as can the Academy Schloss Solitude: a den territory. In Marx, it is the politically contested Baroque castle which houses an academy on the boundary between the lords and the common Volk. edge of the Leonberg Forest. The association of As A.S. Byatt recently suggested, “The fairy tale rural isolation with creativity has persisted today with journey into the woods is a movement inward, into models such as the established Banff creative resi- the lands of the soul. The dark path of the fairy tale dencies in the Rocky Mountains and even the con- forest lies in the shadows of our imagination, the version of the Taransay pods from the BBC Castaway depths of our unconscious. To travel to the wood, to TV series into an artist retreat park. face its dangers, is to emerge transformed by this experience… Italo Calvino has made the inevitable Seen alongside his unnerving, video compositions connection between storytelling and the forest… “He and digital invocations of the uncanny, however, sees a light in the distance, he walks and walks; the O’Kane’s paintings of the ‘ideal studios’ seem to fable unwinds from sentence to sentence, and where resist the romanticism of the rural residency move- is it leading?” ment or artists’ colony. The forms of the architecture cut across the trees and vegetation suggesting an O’Kane’s series of large-scale oil paintings Studio in unwelcome and unyielding intervention. They recall the Woods oscillate between this fiction and reality. that first glimpse of The Overlook Hotel: the brood- The architectural visions of Wright, Alvar Aalto and ing presence of an exterior, emptied of its human Elam & Bray are glimpsed through the trees, the occupants. buildings’ lights flickering in the dim distance. Most recognizable is Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, an As an accumulation of modernist propositions or iconic American retreat, built in 1936 for hallucinations, the paintings (like O’Kane’s manic department store magnate, Edgar Kaufman sequence of Monday Through Sunday) suggest the Sr. Owned and now by Western Pennsylvania tension that underlies Jack Torrance’s own psychosis Conservancy (a US state-run version of the National in The Shining. They reside at the uneasy encounter Trust). The house is of course now dominated by between artifice and nature. Far from being the ‘ideal tourists. In O’Kane’s vision, however, these real and studio’, such places are isolated from the social invented buildings are devoid of occupants. His soft environment, suggesting a stymied creativity - the brushwork, the unnatural skies and picture-postcard ultimate gothic nightmare of the unremitting writer’s Facing page: Ideal Studio series framing serve to heighten the sense of the buildings block. This page: Installation Views as models or stage-sets, devoid of inhabitants and Galerie Schuster + Scheuermann, Berlin 2004 set outside society. Claire Doherty, Bristol 2004 ‘Studio in the woods XI’ oil on can- Since the founding of artists’ colonies in the vas, 244 X 244cm 2003

10 The House In The Trees DVD projection, 25 mins 1994-2003

11 12 Panorama Spectator 4 DVD projection installation, 14 mins 2004

13 14 Monday Through Sunday DVD monitor installation, 4 mins 2004

15 16 Intimate Expansive DVD projection, 4 mins 2004

17 18 BUNKER: Biological, Under, Nuclear, Knowledge, Enemies, Rumour DVD projection, 3 mins 2000

19 20 Avatars DVD projection, 20 mins 2003 STAY: Simply To Authenticate Yourself Photograph, DVD projection, 3 mins 2000

23 Eamon O’Kane’s Tourist Interface looks set up as an whole passed experience of journeying in America, Tourist Interface examination of surroundings- both his own negotia- O’Kane indicates a score of general surroundings and tion of particular surroundings, (a whistle-stop tour of particular perceptions, precisely within the symbolism fourteen states of America), and a supply of visual of a representation as seemingly straightforward as information relating to his journey which implicates photography. In reporting the experience of reality, viewers into a similar relationship with what is pre- of which the American trip is a forced example, this sented. Tourist Interface is certainly a lot to look light-capturing lens-based photography is deployed in at. The images are heaped up like ham and eggs, several different modes of formal organisation. There pancakes and syrup, free refills of corffee. O’Kane, are large colour prints, carousels of projected slides, having presented himself with America, presents us back-lit transparencies, video panorama, and images with series of photographic visuals culled from an shrunken into the massive memory of cd roms. enormous source of images taken there. His itiner- ary is planned, and therefore his surroundings at any The series of large prints is titled After Kafka’s minute are expected to be new, but then unfurl them- America. The reader of this unfinished tale, of the selves in their particularity as constant stimulants. American debuts of its immigrant protagonist Karl This is pretty much what we meet too. Encapsulated Rossman, is immersed in descriptions of surrounding within someone else’s voyage, some carefully select- of which more always seems to be just over the hori- ed particulars dislodge themselves from the general- zon than present. Perhaps this is someway more rep- ity of their framing and allow us to examine how they resentative of the author, in that Kafka had never vis- exemplify the difficulties of adequately representing ited America, and his description of place and objects, an experience. and likely or unlikely situations seems to be wholly worked up from brochures, tales, and illustrations of Our own version of the reality which surrounds us the New World that made their way back to Europe; everyday is fictional- taking sensory processing as the authority of the piece comes from a writer with no representation, as being fundamentally of a different first hand experience or truth of the place described, order from what prompts it, then our idea of reality is but a skill in making it fictionally tight, and sending based on this first operation. Which is always going young Rossman there in his place. Kafka uses the to give an indication of surrounding as codified. Any character’s mannered naiveté as a way of identifying notation of experienced reality is precisely that- nota- surprise and suspicion of the arbitrary surroundings: tion, like a score in music, a symbolic shorthand this writer’s typical territory is the impingement of allowing the reconstruction of an original, but no situations upon the membranes of an identity, and the more than what the information is capable of. It is struggles to maintain that identity in the face of these the exercise of the score which prompts additional effects, usually leading to a crisis. impulses in whoever hears it. Complete in itself, the reconstructional information can be arranged to skim O’Kane’s young man in tourist interface with real the gaps, approximating or offering standard naviga- situations is examined as being both the description tional points or markers, across areas which it cannot and the inner workings, the voracity of the eye and Tourist Interface Installation views, Orchard Gallery, Derry describe. In this case, unable to fully reconstruct the the constructiveness of the author. Fleshing out the 2000

25 26 Panorama Interface DVD projection, 11 mins 2000-2003

27 28 young man and his experience with the back-stored way into these selected prints- even if it ends up as the inspirational impulse to make a photograph may and presenter. The image is caught between stand- capability of making the whole thing fully significant the clouds over the Canyon. As there’s nothing much not translate so well when printed. It is the possibility ard guidebook definition and a ‘work of art’. A tourist in a comfortable and familiar medium is at the core of else there, of differentiation, that must be what the of such loss of verisimilitude to the original, or failure making a guide book. And the images are held some- O’Kane’s project and results, and the work makes us photograph is of. We make it subject because we per- to embody any of that reality that hints at the range where between an artist’s project and a person as a aware of our need to be the in-experienced authors haps want a figure and ground, a perceptual taking of of idea which Tourist Interface is dealing- images of tourist- responsibility to the project and to the self as of our own stories about O’Kane as our adventuring stance. If we are not getting the tourist eye, then are expectation translated into concrete examples of how slightly confused. stand-in. If we are not party to the original situation, we looking for the artist’s eye, to frame and reveal it is a failure, as well as being a valuable lesson. If can the potential fixedness of the presented frag- something special? It is not clear if O’Kane courts this these images are not modes of transport, then what Take the many cityscapes, usual photo-opportunities ments, an experience with supposedly less variables, meaning. However, it must be said that if you’ve just else is there about them? They are failures only if we from tall buildings. These are stores of visual informa- elicit a directed or steered response? got a hammer, pretty soon everything begins to look believe in some kind of approachable reconstruction, tion to pore over later, while the itinerary hurries on, like a nail. Are these images differentiated sufficiently some way in, some virtuality. As they are, with fan- like the slide projector. The height of the vantagepoint This photographic series initiates an awareness of as examples of something to warrant printing them up tasy pragmatically exposed, they are more real than is noteworthy- somehow definitively American. There the distinctive complexity with which this project is to exhibition size? Is there any thread to the images? anything. are a lot of skyscrapers. Like the photographer, they characterised. Their every reading is complicated in a Possible links include the focus on structured vis- are a great vantage point to see out from, but equally, series of relationships which set the artist against the ibilities that make themselves prominent, as does the There’s a painted sign for water, attached to a pole and most deliberately, signifiers of presence, in that nominal tourist, the special against the mundane, the emphasis on surroundings- gas-tanks functioning as in what looks like a desert truckstop. This would everything visible from them is also a position from artist’s mundane against the tourist’s special. At first supports for massively painted Pepsi ads; the airy probably be snapped by anyone coming across it- a where they are visible. They are presence epito- glance, what settles these pictures into place as dif- tunnel of a wire-covered walkway, the wire surround- contextual irony everyone would enjoy- irresistible mised, whatever way you read it along the straight ferent to traveler’s’ snapshots is the lack of a confron- ing with an insistence and a patterned repetitiveness and pure pop because of that. A little irony for the lines that light travels. tational human presence as the focus of the frame. that has no truck with a natural versus artificial dialog, future, a little amusement, but also something that The typical tourist photograph usually positions a but is just a succinct method of signifying enclosure. would prioritise the picture-taker as recognising the But we are aware of America through mediation- person significant to the photographer in front of the Given its formal tunnel-like shape, it implies progres- combination of things that makes it slightly out of something of its very nature has in one form or ‘site’ or ‘sight’. The meaning of the instant is person sion forwards and also that vision may pass through it the ordinary. So O’Kane admits that this image is another become part of ourselves. We might still cling surrounded by place. Resultant photographs don’t so but the body cannot. This also implies that O’Kane, at a container of some slight amusement, i.e., it would to our ideas of local beauty of the corner of the world much show the natural beauty of say, Yellowstone, any point on his journey, is located not only in space have a function which is transparent to all. But not we come from- but the American landscape is simi- but, our Doreen in the wonderfully beautiful but slight- but in a duration of time, suspended there by the everybody would take a photo of a convex security larly packaged- Vermont, the deserts and monument ly obscured Yellowstone: obscured by presence. As if logic of carrying through the itinerary. Suddenly STAY mirror at some bus station with themselves reflected Valley, the LA mountains, the flatlands of Nebraska, to make this change in meaning apparent, the type makes more sense. in it, or a phone leaning towards us- the inevitable the swamps of Louisiana, and the small island of of place usually chosen by O’Kane is not exactly connection with our self-conscious subject, reporting Manhattan. It is surprising how much information ‘photo-opportunity’. Payphone with a concentration Then viewpoint and scale are manipulated to produce back to the homeland or the parents, or simply mak- from these dripping mediations is stored in our heads, of cigarette butts, leaning out from the picture plane a confusing shot of the SKY sign, which makes the ing itineraries work. and how impossible to trace are the paths by which to disturbing effect. Quoting the words ‘contemporary whole side of a building read as something attached we can reason out a possible location from O’Kane’s art’, from a hyper-reflective museum sign. The grand to a lamppost. Immediately this illusion is steadied, The differing visual approaches, print, projection, images, from the look of a city, its river and bridges, admonishment to STAY, a poppy legacy from the six- you realise that its occurrence was due to a combina- lightbox, video, all identify presence in other ways. its weather. Or where we put the photographer from ties, just an advert for itself, and just as clearly, an tion of viewpoint and the single-lens compression of The artists’ eye, as it frames the subject, is visually the aridity of what is a desert, or a national park, the address to the individual. What order of things are space- a particular which the viewing eye is quick to acute, educated; impossible to eradicate its trace in Half-Dome rock of Yosemite still there in colour as stood in for Doreen, as it were? Signs, brandnames, corroborate. The flatness of these images carries its the images. Then the presence is implied, the eye, familiar from black and white prints by Ansel Adams. free newspaper stands- a subject always creeps its own warning- scale and space may be distorted, or the why, the person behind the camera, the chooser There are the slides, projected from two different

29 30

projectors, one shows only vertical format, one linked, non-synchronised, with the slide projections, only horizontal. Any old slides, repeating a familiar the piece assumes the familiarity of an end -of -holi- slide-show coda to the meaning of holiday? Some, day gathering, the telling of a story. But as it is from ‘In a rich VRE, single or multiple users are immersed if studied closely, reveal a grain which is not as wet a diary, it presents as voice writing the mnemonics of ‘The word panorama was first coined in in an environment comprised of data and can and gelid as others- a grain which is made of printer’s an episode to itself, allowing itself to fly off on wings in 1792, nine years after the Montgolfier Brothers’ rosettes of cyan, magenta, yellow and black. These of memory at the mere reading of these words. Of interact and operate in real time with the aid of a slides are photographs taken of images in books, course, this is a key to the project’s dialog on rep- first flight in a hot air balloon.’ the sort of books, usually also without people, which resentation- the original totality is denied to us, as dataglove, full body suit, 3D eyephones and a are a compendium of Christmas-gifty glosses to the it is to O’Kane, and the different diary accounts do simulation of 360 degree sound.’ American landscape. O’Kane’s copied photos tend not consolidate it too much, but introduce different Shelley Rice to be mainly of natural scenes, which gives them a responses even from the same original. All we have petrified and airless sense, while the urban scenes are images and arrangement, all he has are images, Luciano Floridi actually photographed by him are wetter, more alive, words, and memories. Neither of us have the full from the world. So Tourist Interface photographs story present, but we have indications of it, and these things he hasn’t seen, places he hasn’t been. memory, like perception, is shown as a representa- But might have been, what’s the difference? If we’re tion of something now historical, or passed. solely looking for authenticity, then it implies that our relationship to his experience negotiated through To some extent, the trace of the biographical, with first-hand photos is somehow predetermined, and us this far, has set the standard by which we view liable to disappointment when the play of images these, and that biographical is revealed as necessar- is doubled. It is as if the personal stake we have ily complicated enough to become its own subject, endowed O’Kane with has been compromised- we suspicious even, and redefining a more familiar were following him, an assumed known quantity, territory- how the complications of experience and through the journey. Now here we are, spun off from experience transcribed and what it does to remem- that intimacy by artificiality, as we realise he is not bering is a completely fluid systematic, and how the specifically in need of such attention, but an attention notation results that an artist is also circumscribed that will bear with him through each version of com- by his or her own territory and history, their work plicating representation. To look at our own expecta- a priori contextualised by something pre-existent. ‘...an experimental response to a deeply felt need, tions, and what the representations had already made O’Kane alludes to this position by being careful to us think. The voices of O’Kane and his girlfriend Anja list, in his diary, artworks he sees in museums, of a need for a medium that could surround the spec- reading their journey diaries seem endearingly naïve: which he takes no photos- that for all their universal ‘This display technology projects images directly tators and plunge them into a spectacular illusion.” almost as if something is hidden- something like a reproducibility, it takes physical work to go and see real response, beyond the probably totally accurate them, and they have a geographical location. This onto the human retina, exceeds the resolution of humdrumming of the diary: a counterpart to what is then feeds into the slides- once this kind of interest is human vision, and is widely used regardless of Jeff Wall on panoramas seen, as if the voice, writing to itself and to its own admitted by O’Kane, every American flag seen in the memory, is silenced by the experience, and that the corner of some slide becomes a quotation of Jasper visual impairment.’ went here...did this... is just a metonymic skeleton for Johns, etc. the experience, sounding basically exhausted. When The choice of format is clarified, by the expedient of Ray Kurzweil

33 AKA: After Kafka’s Amerika Slide projection, audio installation + DVD pro- jection, 2000

35 36 horizontal or vertical projection, as a rectangular con- the rotating eyes. Played back with a double projec- vention suiting the subject within terrific constraints. tion and some text linking the panorama to virtuality Representations seen as doing their best to signifi- and modernist theories of the , these loops are cantly condense a totality. This leads onto the video forced to surround the viewer, at least on three sides- work, which, try as it might, ends up doing the same or maybe four, including the projecting apparatus as thing, the same loss-in-excellence, ultimate scopic subject. The emphasis, as with original painted pano- ability leaving out so much. The ghost of virtual real- ramas, is not the feeling of being in an actual place, ity is mentioned as one other way of duping ourselves but of being confronted by marvelous representation, with a possible total reconstruction. A reconstruction which is a flatness, blocking the view. But also, by of a time spent looking- but isn’t that what we been being representation, attracting the natural rove of doing all along? the eye and its curiosity. The meaning seems to be not in the nutshell, but the shell itself. This time the Video loops projected on the walls take the pano- curve of vision is convex, not concave. ramic as their theme; 360 degree rotations showing There’s a clue to this ‘ inverse retinal ‘ of the pano- city streets, rooftops, at night and day, quick and rama on the photograph that was chosen for the slow. Original painted panorama’s, dating from the invitation card. It shows O’Kane on the roof of some th late 18 century, surrounded the central viewer with NY building, video camera on tripod pointed at the a huge cylindrical canvas, perhaps of landscape, city- distant Empire State Building, with, in the foreground, scape, or historical event such as a battle. The size a bag containing a globe. Globes spin- the examiner of the illusion and lack of referentiality (the painting usually stays in the same place- all the information being in total occupation of the gaze) was one of the can be brought past them. In a geometrically inverse first steps in total immersion of the viewer, an attempt appropriation, O’Kane’s video panoramas bring all to surround them with a seamless representation. the information past us, through a flat screen. At times, moving too fast to be much except a blur, a Significantly for the development of illusion, towards shorthand for surroundedness, located beginning the truly virtual, the next step was the diorama, which and ending on the image of some fixture- the recog- was usually set of rectangular scenes which rotated nition of a full 360. But there is with each a deliberate around the viewer. The critical difference between the starting and finishing to the sweep, a speeding and panorama spectator physically moving and the scene slowing, as if to make us recognise that we have moving is something that has persisted through the come full circle. When not physically moving, we are history of illusion, to film and video. quite helpless to make spatial sense of the length of Tourist Interface’s panoramic work remains, in panorama we have seen. The starting and stopping essence, planar visual sequences, where the view is point is a coordinate of the plane, recognised through not literally scoped by the viewer; it is brought past its reappearance. What we know to be a surrounding them, through a set rectangular frame. Only with a patently fails to feel like one. We are forced to see an total virtuality is the prospect of a physical orienta- attempt to locate us, through representation, as not tion significantly altering the experience coming back even requiring the suspension of disbelief. As all the Tourist Interface to recognition. O’Kane’s video camera stands in for superb information passes us, with its intimation of Photograph on pvc, 122 X 183cm 2000

37 38 LOW: Prophet DVD projection, 3 mins 2000

39 40 unlimited capability for capture of visual treasure, it that happened. Normal representation is not ridi- still looks like the totality of information necessary to culed, but it is set up as something that is worthwhile totally recreate experience through a flat rectangle is paying closer attention to. Is this normalcy protected, exponentially incapable of catching up. even though criticised, for its own benefit, inoculated against taking itself too seriously? Perhaps, within The levels of play are, as everywhere, overlapped, the maintenance of systems of representation as a as when an existing painted panorama is itself taken continuity, as much as getting the surface content, we as the subject of a centrally pivoting video record- also desire to know the mechanics of it, the privilege ing- a massive 360 degree painting of Neo-Classical of the inside story. O’Kane makes it impossible in a Europe in America. The curves of vision are flattened way to pass on, or to assume from that outlook that it out to produce what seems like an impossible return is ‘Just another examination’, historically limited, with to the beginning along a flat path. To muddy the all the results expected found. The generosity of his waters further is effortless; a place for viewing includ- display, and some of its personality-based whimsical- ed in the sweep; quoting Dan Graham’s contempo- ity, is another way of just shifting the emphasis of a rary artwork, a rectangular glass viewing pavilion, set certain situation’s obviousness- even the Statue of up on top of a New York arts building, (transparency Liberty holds the torch of freedom above its head, caught in its necessity like a window pane at night) i.e. where you cannot reach. and you allude to conditions for seeing- for that as a sufficient subject in itself, that doesn’t offer closure, Padraig Timoney 2000 but opens at least the process of particularised and circumscribed viewing as a potential subject to think about. The idea of the privileged rectangular frame, as producer of a single authoritative place of mean- ing, is broken open and scattered by the implication of a limitless and non-hierarchical way of seeing, at once whimsical and also attentive, and popular enough to recognise an easily significant situation when it sees one. Like Karl Rossman’s view of the streets of New York from a high balcony, as a daz- zling glass surface being constantly smashed from one moment to the next.

O’Kane’s project is an implication of the ubiquitous normalcy of representation, and how this display Clouds + Contemporary Art uses that but is aware of it; as being the first refuge Photograph on pvc, 122 X 183cm of someone with their own story to tell. Very quickly, 2000 it becomes apparent that the story being told is as much about its own constructedness as anything Dan Graham, Rooftop Park for Dia Center for the Arts, 1981-91 Collection, Dia Center for the Arts, New York

41 42 This page and opposite: Home, Real, Fatherland, Virtual sex, Nanobot Swarm, The Sign Lamda prints 122 X 91cm 2001-2002 The ‘Sign Series’ that followed on from the postcard paintings also reflect on the phenomenon of modern travel and cultural tourism. The ‘Sign’ works investigate the growth of tourist attractions. By adding text panels under existing directional or informational signs he cre- ated a new interpretation of these objects. Likewise he has used re-positioning of found signs and the resultant work functioned as both site specific or as photo docu- mentation. Using found signs, the added texts panel put forward the suggestion that even the use of a ‘sign’ itself creates a ‘thing’ to be looked at. In this manner the found ‘sign’ and its commentary text are joined in an uneasy self-reflexive engagement for the viewer to grapple with.

Mike Fitzpatrick, Diector, Limerick City Gallery of Art

Overlook Installation views, Triskel Arts Centre 2004

Overlook Installation views, Triskel Arts Centre 2004

45 46 This page and opposite: Medieval church, White Cube, Political art, Picture plane, Ideal gallery, Colonial space Lamda prints 183 X 122 cm 2003-2004 Biography Tourist Interface Orchard Gallery, Derry Curio, Brick Lane, London Hardline, Catalyst Arts, An American Cross Section, Butler Gallery, Straylight: Digital Art Exhibition, Darklight Film Connect, and Newry train stations 1974 born in Belfast (catalogue) Festival, Dublin Awards / commissions / residencies 2001 MFA (Design Technology) Parsons School of HTML, Javascript, The USA etc, Galleri 21, Malmö MOSTYN OPEN 12, Oriel Mostyn Gallery, Llandudno Design, New York, USA 1999 Postcard Cities , KoRaw Gallery@Bankside, London Tabula Rasa, video projections in Croydon city centre 2005 Cill Rialaig Project, Kerry 1998/99 Research Fellowship (Painting), KOORDINATER MCMIC, Overgaden, Copenhagen SCA-ART Awards exhibition, Mannheim Kunstverein 2004 Artist’s Work Programme, IMMA, Dublin Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher America, Cavanacor Gallery, Co. Donegal Invited Artists, Hallward Gallery, Dublin 2002 Imagine Belfast Panorama commission, Belfast Education 1998 Galleri Lisse Bruun, Copenhagen On Board, Sligo Art Gallery, Sligo Residency, Tilburg Art Academy 1998 MFA, University of , Belfast Occupation MCMXCVIII, Basement Gallery, Dundalk VII, Lead White Gallery, Dublin 2000 Media-Play-Off, Bertelsmann Pavillion, Planet M, 1996 BA Fine Art, NCAD, Dublin Invisible Cities, Letterkenny Arts Centre, Letterkenny Sommerudstilling, Galleri Lisse Bruun, Copenhagen Hannover Expo, Hannover New Works, Hallward Gallery, Dublin Cavanacor Gallery, Co. Donegal Artflight Award, Aer Lingus & Arts Council of Ireland Eamon O’Kane lives and works in Bristol Grid Reference, Blackstaff Mill, Belfast R.H.A. Annual Exhibition, RHA, Dublin General Art Award, Arts Council of 1997 RESTORATION MCMXCVII, Foyle Arts Centre, Derry Recent Acquisitions, Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, Dublin KPMG Award, 2000 Art Exhibition, Dublin 1996 KUNST I,II,III,IV,V…, University of Ulster, Belfast EV+A 2002, Limerick City Gallery of Art, Limerick Text/Context, collaborative web site with Jack Sal for Solo exhibitions 1995 One Person Exhibition, Europoint, Rotterdam AKA III, Stockholm Art Fair, Stockholm Hannover Expo 2000, Hannover 2001 Crawford Open, Crawford Gallery, Cork 1999 Fulbright Award, Brian Burns Scholarship (visual arts) 2004 Galerie Mikael Andersen, Copenhagen Articulate, Station, Bristol Ireland-U.S. Com. for Edu. Exchange Millenium Arts Centre, Portadown (catalogue) Selected group exhibitions Victor Treacy Award Exhibition, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny 1998 Tony O’Malley Travel Award for Painters, Butler Galerie Lutz & Thalmann, Zurich Vacationland, Art House, Dublin Gallery & Waterford Crystal Cavanacor Gallery, Co. Donegal 2004 RE-JOYCE’ Temple Bar, Dublin Rondout Sculpture Biennal, Kingston, NY Emerging Artist Award, Donegal County Council Studio in the Woods, Galerie Schuster & The Bigger Picture, Cornerhouse, and Manchester Focus on Drawing, LGCA, Limerick Arena Hoarding Project, Letterkenny Scheuermann, Berlin R.H.A. Annual Exhibition (invited), RHA, Dublin 2000 PERSPECTIVE 2000 (+ 1998), Ormeau Baths 1997 Panorama Project, Athens, organised by ELIA, Triskel Arts Centre, Cork (catalogue) Travelogue, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny Gallery, Belfast Hogeschool Ghent, Athens School of Fine Art, Studio in the Woods, Campus Galerie, Bayreuth Scope Art Fair, Iontas 2000 (+ 1997, 1994), RHA, Dublin and touring Athens, University of Plymouth, Exeter. (catalogue) Art Forum, Berlin (+ 2003) Connect, Public Art in Transit Project, Belfast-Dublin 2003 Lead White Gallery, Dublin Frankfurt Art Fair, Frankfurt (+ 2002, 2003) Snapshot, Contemporary Museum, Baltimore Joint Best Drawing Prize, IONTAS, Dublin Galerie Lutz & Thalmann, Zurich ARTfutures 2004, London Refresh: Dystopia + identity, Tribes Gallery, New York Joint Best Student Prize, IONTAS, Dublin Das Atelier im Wald, Galerie Schuster, Frankfurt Iontas Award Winners Exhibition, Sligo Art Gallery Extracts, Engine Room Gallery, Belfast Artsite, site specific billboard, Belfast Devine Gallery, Louisville 2003 Dreams, Sligo Art Gallery, Sligo Irish Art Exhibition, Vine Gallery, Louisville 1996 Postgraduate Bursary, D.F.E., British Council Hildesheim Kunstverein, Hildesheim (catalogue) 6X6 for Ireland, Shanghai Self Portraits, Deep Dale, New York City Taylor Art Award, Royal Dublin Society, Dublin 2002 Galerie Schuster & Scheuermann, Berlin Art Cologne, Cologne Irish Arts 2000, Studio 1019, Washington DC Thomas Damman Jr. Award for Travel and Study Abroad Bildermacher, Galerie Schuster, Frankfurt (catalogue) From Bahia to over by yer, tactileBOSCH, Cardiff Florence Biennale of Contemporary Art, Ashford 1995 Artflight Award, Aer Lingus & Arts Council of Ireland Studio 91, 011 Podium, Tilburg Works from the collection, Kunsthaus, Gelnhausen Gallery, Dublin Rotterdam Project’ sponsored by CBK, Rotterdam Neuffer am Park, Pirmasens The National Gallery, Goethe Institute, Dublin 1999 Florence Biennale, Florence Erasmus Award to Academy of Fine Arts in Rotterdam 2001 AKA II, Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick Robinson Building Exhibition, Bristol Eamon O’Kane, Niamh O’Malley + Joanna Fursman, 1994 Elizabeth Fitzpatrick Scholarship for Travel & Study Photographs, Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast Shanghai Film Festival Context Gallery, Derry Abroad, RHA Dublin After Kafka’s America, Hallward Gallery, Dublin EV+A 2003 (+ 2002, 2001, 1999), LCGA, Limerick Documentation etc, Pitville Gallery, Cheltenham International Student Artist in Residency Award, Proportion, Galleri Lisse Bruun, Copenhagen Referenz, Galerie Lutz & Thalmann, Zurich ArtLink @ Sotheby’s, Tel Aviv, Israel and Chicago Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent 2000 This Indenture, Donskoj + Co. Gallery, Kingston, NY 54 Degrees North, Hull 1998 M2 Fax Box Project, Banana Factory, Bethlehem, PA Aer Lingus Art Competition, Winner Extension Irish Arts Centre, New York City 2002 Tabula Rasa, Croydon Forest, The Bull and Last, London

49 50 SOAP Hog DVD projection, 7 mins DVD projection, 3 mins 2000 2002

51 52 1995 Vermeulen, Eveline Manifestatie Laurenskwartier, Arnold, Bruce ‘Florence Biennale’ catalogue, Centrum Beeldende Kunst, catalogue, Selected bibliography Florence, Dec Rotterdam Jones, Ruth ‘Niamh O’Malley, Eamon O’Kane, Collections 2003 McNally, Brenda ‘Building a successful career’ Joanna Fursman’ SSI magazine, Nov The Sunday Tribune, Sept 7 Greenberg, Jeanne ‘EV+A: Reduced’ Catalogue, Dundalk Institute of Technology (commission) ‘Grand Tour’ Tages Anzeiger, Aug 21-27 Limerick, May Belfast City Council (commission) Drinkwater, Ros ‘Gambling on art’s young talent’ Currah, Mark ‘Sean Hillen, Eamon O’Kane: KoRaw’ Hillsborough Castle (commission) The Sunday , March 16 Time Out, London, April 28 - May 5 Mary McAleese, , Aras An Uachtarain Dunne, Aidan ‘Opening Irish gallery doors’ The ‘Sean Hillen, Eamon O’Kane: KoRaw’ Evening (commission) Irish Times, March 15 Standard, London, April 26 Dublin 98FM, Microsoft 2002 Ewart, Mark ‘Crawford Open 2’ SSI magazine, Reitov, Ole ‘Kulturnyt’ (Cultural News), Danmarks Bank of Ireland Collection July/August Radio P1, Feb 23 Irish Contemporary Arts Society Stafford, Mark + Musiat, Anja ‘die bildermacher’ Morgenavisen Jyllandsposten, ‘Eamon O’Kane Office of Public Works catalogue, May Udstiller’ Feb 15 PMPA and Guardian Insurance Musiat, Anja ‘Making a living from art’ Studies ‘The Ida Branson Bequest’ exhibition catalogue, Feb Donegal County Library Quarterly Review, Summer issue Jørgensen, Susanne ‘Eamon O’Kane’, BT, Jan 29 Letterkenny Institute of Technology Poshyananda, Apinan ‘Concerning Heroes + Schierbeck, Ole ‘Irsk kulturfremstød i Danmark, Country Bank, New York Martyrs’, EV+A Catalogue Politiken, Jan 8 Unibank Dunne, Aidan ‘A rewardingly obsessive attention Olsen, Mette ’Irerne kommer til byen’ Jyllandsposten, NKT to artistic detail‘ , Jan 2 Jan 8 HK 2001 Dunne, Aidan ‘Maintaining classical calm in life’s Danai, Tal ‘International Young Art ‘99’ ArtLink @ Den Danske Bank flux‘ The Irish Times, Sept 19 Sotheby’s, Tel Aviv, Chicago, Jan Cassai, Mary “Kingston Biennial changes ‘beat’” 1998 Libens, Daniel & Diggle, Jeremy ‘Panorama Athens’, Works in private collections in Ireland, England Scotland, Daily Freeman, July 20 publication & CD-ROM, Nov Denmark, , Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Kiberd, Declan ‘Millenium Box Set’ Hot Bed Dompierre, Hedge, Sverakova ‘Perspective ‘98’, Spain and Germany. Press, Limerick, July catalogue, Oct Dunne, Aidan ‘Cautionary Tale of a Gallery Guide‘ Hendry, Matthew ‘Artist of the month’ Profile, Arts Link The Irish Times, May 9 FitzGerald, Derval ‘Art on the line’, CIRCA, Summer Beazley, Eric ‘AKA (After Kafka’s Amerika) by Sverakova, Dr. Slavka M.F.A. catalogue Eamon O’Kane’, www.entertainmentireland.ie, May 1 Sverakova, Dr. Slavka ‘Eamon O’Kane - Selected 2000 Cassai, Mary ‘Art Beat’ (Review) Daily Freeman, Sept 15 work 1997/98’ catalogue Kearney, Fiona ‘An American Cross Section’ 1997 Weston, Gavin ‘Museum of The Twentieth Century’, Catalogue, May The Sunday Times, Nov 23 ‘Nord Kunst’ Television Interview, Malmö, March O’Cuiv, Ruairi, Iontas ’97, catalogue, Sligo Nelson, Brid ‘Anything Irish’ television interview, 1996 Fallon, Brian ‘250 years of Irish Drawing’, The Irish Woodstock, USA, March Times, 21 Nov 1999 Roberta Reeners, (Editor) ‘A Buyer’s guide to Irish Sheridian, Noel NCAD 250 Drawings 1746-1996, SIBS Art’ Foreword by Dorothy Walker, Ashville Media catalogue, Dublin DVD projection, 4 mins Group Ltd, Dublin Fallon, Brian ‘The RHA comes back to life’, The Irish 2002 Brophy, Richard ‘Who’s Who in Ireland?’ Dublin Times, April 24

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Animates: Die Bildermacher mixed media installation and animations, 3 mins, 2002-2003 Acknowledgements

Images courtesy Galerie Schuster Frankfurt + Berlin Copyright Eamon OʼKane 2004

ISBN

Thanks to: University of the West of England Claire Doherty Padraig Timoney Anja Musiat Emma Johnston OʼKane family Orchard Gallery, Derry

Designed by Eamon OʼKane + Anja Musiat Printed by Taylor Brothers Bristol Ltd, UK

Published by Galerie Schuster Frankfurt + Berlin Fahrgasse 8, 60311 Frankfurt, Germany www. galerie-schuster.de

Eamon OʼKane www.eokprojects.com

Edition of 1000

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