The National College
Sculpture - Academic Staff Profiles
Mick O'Kelly ,
BA, MFA
Lecturer, Fine Art Sculpture
Mick O’Kelly is currently doing a PhD with Interface at the University of Ulster Northern Ireland. He has studied for his BFA at the National College of Art and Design Dublin, (1982-1985) and did his MFA at the California Institute of the Arts USA, (1995-1997). He is a visiting artist to art schools in Ireland, UK, Germany, France, Finland and Brazil. He has exhibited nationally and internationally and engages in contextual art initiatives beyond the gallery and museum structure. Ongoing concerns in his work and research acknowledge the changing nature of contemporary art, and issues of situated practice, location and context.
Research Interests
The production of space as an ethical exchange.
O’Kelly’s current research and art initiatives look at, “The Production of Space as an Ethical Exchange”. This idea emphasizes space not as a natural phenomenon but as socially produced and negotiated through ethical relations. These relationships are experienced in urban practices and built environment. The site of this discourse is placed between the formal city as a predetermined object/artifact that renders public and private space as prescriptive and fixed. And the informal city, regarded by orthodox urbanists as illegitimate space, non-space, in some instances does not register on local maps. Marginal communities are signified as zones of exclusion. These are spaces of proximity, interstitial spaces of territorial assemblages whose structures are in an indeterminate state of impermanence and incompleteness. The future of Urbanism no longer holds a universally applicable image, neither for a cultural vision or a method of intervention for artists, architects or town planners. The global city or megalopolis is not only challenged and influenced by there own expanding suburbs but by their secondary cities and beyond. The reach of this influence is considerable, not only addressing centre and periphery but intersecting with formal and informal economies on a global scale. Informal urbanism offers alternative ways to negotiate and articulate particular urban practices in finding new urban imaginings.
Current Projects
Nomadic Kitchen
Nomadic Kitchen (under construction),
Vila Nova Saõ Miguel Saõ Paulo 2006.
Urban Negotiations are art strategies that find possibilities for art to engage in real life issues. Nomadic Kitchen is an interstitial art initiative that engages in the process of regeneration with the residents of Vila Nova, Sao Miguel Brazil. Nomadic Kitchen is one urban practice among many in a collaborative and participatory action in the production of public and private space in Vila Nova. The structure will function as a community locus where residents self govern and develop flexible and creative ways of building a context for living. The structure of Nomadic Kitchen is flexible, fluid, nomadic and adaptable to different occasions and contexts. Urban decisions around producing public and social space are made while cooking eating and meeting in the Nomadic Kitchen. This interstitial structure becomes a place of dialogue while defining the conditions that determine the public sphere.
Urban Negotiations looks at new strategies for making art; this involves engaging with questions such as; what are the limits of an artwork? Can one inhabit an artwork rather than it being something one goes to observe? Nomadic Kitchen looks to another kind of relationship with art and how art and artists function in society. This form of art making changes the role of audience from spectator to user/occupier. This strategy valorizes participatory action and urban creativity in producing new urban imaginings.
Projects
An Artwork for an Imperfect World
An Artwork for an Imperfect World, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin, 2005.
“An Artwork for an Imperfect World” is an art strategy that addresses the social and political structures that creates homelessness. This project evolved as a collaborative process bringing together NGO organizations Merchants Quay, The Homeless Agency, people suffering homelessness, Temple Bar Gallery, City Arts and the artist. By placing an artwork (an altered van) capable of serving a hot meal to people suffering homelessness, in Temple Bar Gallery, questions the gallery as site and art as object as an appropriate site of intervention to hold this discourse. The project disrupts the ordinary function of the gallery as primarily a place of aesthetics, instead prioritizing the experience in terms of ethical relations where acts of exchange are worked out in the face to face. The work engages with acts of citizenship that is based on participation where that engagement is one of constant negotiation. The signifying strategy of locating this artwork in the public and private sphere awkwardly draws attention to the fault lines of how we see ourselves as a society. An artwork for an imperfect world was launched in Temple Bar Gallery on the 21st February 2005. After the presentation in Temple Bar Gallery the work was offered to Merchants Quay Ireland to support their outreach program in supplying a service to the homeless in the street.
Immigrant Vehicle
Immigrant Vehicle, 2001, Carlow.
Immigrant Vehicle was a time based public artwork that travelled around a number of counties in Ireland over an eight-month period, spending a short time in each principle town. The work addressed issues of the democracy of public space and access to the freedom of speech and the public sphere. The work also dealt with issues of xenophobia, difference and the potential for their being many publics in the future of an Irish identity. Installed in the immigrant vehicle was a series of audio texts constructed by immigrants seeking political asylum or refugee status. These recordings articulate narratives of belonging and dislocation. Immigrant Vehicle simulated the reality of human trafficking.
Two Dwellings
Two Dwellings, 1999, proposal for a public art commission, Sligo.
Two Dwellings was a public art proposal for Sligo County Council, the work addressed national and local concerns around social affordable housing. Two Dwellings as a public artwork proposed two single teenage mothers for a temporary period of three years, to assist in their participating and re-entering civil society. The intimacy of the artwork creates a micro community within the greater Sligo community. Two dwellings is a form of urban negotiation where the potential for art is to engage beyond systems of representation.
Genus
Genus, Heathrow Airport, London, 1994.
Genus was a public art commission in collaboration with Public Art Development Trust and British Airways, Heathrow Airport, London, UK.
Download: Mick O'Kelly Curriculum Vitae (PDF 48k)
