John O'Connell is a sculptor whose films, photographs, drawings, assemblages and installations form a complex series of interrelated objects that operate and acquire meaning within the private and make-believe universe that he has created.
It is a surreal dimension, inspired by the world of dreams and the supernatural, where bizarre and fragmentary narratives develop according to an unfamiliar logic. This logic relates to the process of artistic creation and begins with drawing, which O'Connell uses to visualize landscapes, characters and structures. These develop into miniature stage sets or environments, populated with strange and imaginative objects, that merge with our world through the idiom of sculpture.
The large paper structure Big Pink occupies the gallery like a strange supernatural being that has crossed from the artist's imagination into our reality. His miniature stage sets are the arena for the implementation of unusual experiments, carried out by the artist to explore form, composition and narrative structures.
These experiments take on a performative and impulsive quality as the artist draws on a variety of unconventional artistic media such as water, gunpowder, dust, earth and baking powder to create unexpected effects. Such materials possess their own unique physical properties which, when manipulated by the artist, evoke or stimulate greater natural and supernatural phenomena. The process is played out before the lens of a camera, captured on video and presented on screen, lending the work a further theatrical and illusionary dimension.
extract from Fragmenting the Mould - An analysis of sculptural practice in the work of a selection of artists from Ireland and the UK
By Donal Maguire, Centre for the Study of Irish Art, National Gallery of Ireland