'Mercurial', Curated By Kathy O'Leary

David Holmes, Helen Sharp: 'I am Here'. NI/UK                           16.21 mins.
Afri Ireland, Dearbhla Glynn: 'Fermanagh's Future'. N.I.               08.59 mins.
Johnnie Lawson: 'Relaxing Sounds of Nature'. IRL.                     10.00 mins.

Ruth Le Gear: 'Alchemical Waters'. IRL.                                       12.12 mins.

Kathy O'Leary: 'Second Sight | Site'. IRL.                                     08.15 mins.
Mathieu Alepin: 'Farewell'. CAN.                                                   07.00 mins.

Michael Higgins: 'At One Fell Swoop'. IRL.                                   70.00 mins.

'Mercurial' through the use of analogue and digital formats, is a series of Irish and International feature and short films. The screening will take place at the Glens Centre on 

Friday the 21^st of August at 8-11pm during the Five Glens Arts Festival in Manorhamilton.

The intention is to create a kaleidoscopic interpretation of the resilient and vulnerable nature that exists between the relationship of creatural and environmental experiences.

This screening will be a lively, experimental, an expansive view of 'being' and 'thinking wilderness' and is implemented through moving image and sound, not intended to offer answers but to develop questions and dialogue.

The chosen title 'Mercurial' deriving from the word Mercury a fluid, active, unpredictable, and fickle matter in essence. At times 'Mercurial' co-exists with human and environmental elements, anthropological in method, through the use of satire, solidarity and solemnity, to examine the alternate states, in relation to the human condition.

The screenings feature local and international, changeable mind-scapes that is comprised in a (two and half hour approximately) audio and visual scape.

David Holmes, Helen Sharp; 'I am Here'. N.I. | UK | 16.21 mins.

Canderblinks Film and TV

On a journey through a heightened world, a lone man awakes after death and tunes into a new sound, a familiar poetry that seems to beckon him forward. Tuning into memories of his childhood and family, Michael begins to realize this strange world might lead him somewhere close to home.

Afri Ireland; Dearbhla Glynn, 'Fermanagh's Future'. N.I. | 08.59 mins.

Exploration of fracking proposals for County Fermanagh by award winning film maker Dearbhla Glynn. Supported by Afri - Action from Ireland.

Johnny Lawson; 'Relaxing Sounds of Nature'. IRL. | 10.00 mins.

Relaxing Sounds of Nature-Wind-Ocean Waves-Soothing Tranquil Meditation Instrumental Music

Relax with the peaceful and soothing sound of the ocean and wind, mixed with wonderful tranquil chill out music. Let these tranquil sounds calm your mind. Lawson filmed this amazing little wonder of nature, a miniature sand dune being formed, on a very windy day on the West coast of Ireland.

Ruth Le Gear; 'Alchemical Waters'. IRL. | 12.12 mins.

Artic Residency

Alchemical Waters is a video piece in which a remedy from the melt
waters of an iceberg was created in the Arctic. In 2012 Le Gear travelled to the Arctic and spent a number of weeks sailing the high Arctic seas on board a tall ship collecting iceberg samples and experimenting with their meltwaters. The work engages with with the subtle earth energies that ebb and flow through the landscape, creating a relationship with the spirit and place.

Kathy O'Leary; 'Second Sight | Site'. IRL. | 08.15 mins.

Locis; European Artists' Residency

A wormhole is a theoretical concept from the physicist Albert Einstein in 1935, this theory created a passage through space-time that could create shortcuts for long journeys across the universe. Wormholes are predicted by the theory of general relativity, they can bring with them the dangers of sudden collapse, high radiation and dangerous contact with exotic matter.

Through audio and visual type 'wormholes', a visual interpretation of these concepts and theories, as if traveling through space-time into different dimensions and environments was experimented with using satire, motion, music, film and photography.

The Locis residency was funded through the Leitrim Arts Office.

Mathieu Alepin; 'Farewell'. CAN. | 07.00 mins.

48 Hour Film Project

A musician’s tour launch party: 'Farewell'. No one shows up to a singer-songwriter’s going away party except for his manager, who doesn’t believe in his music and doesn’t think he has the gumption to make it in the music industry.

In this he's directorial debut, a short comedy, co-written and acted with Stevie Jay. Mathieu Alepin's who is from Montreal and based Toronto, Ontario, Canada is a singer-songwriter, screenwriter, author, director, producer, and actor.

Michael Higgins; 'At One Fell Swoop'. IRL. | 70.00 mins

Feature

At One Fell Swoop deals with a stonemason (Cillian Roche) and his metamorphic wander through rural Ireland. In passing he slips through the film’s frames into a re-imagining of his surroundings in which he finds himself trapped on an intense cataclastic path towards a dead end. Photographed on expired 16mm black and white film and entirely hand-processed, At One Fell Swoop resembles a phantom-like film lodged amid multiple 
stratums of time and space. Arts Council funded At One Fell Swoop was shot on location in and around the Five Glens.

Mercurial: Five Glens Arts Festival

http://www.theglenscentre.com/
 
http://www.fiveglensartsfestival.com/news.html
 
http://thinkingwilderness.org/ 

'5th Wheel Element Project' Review by Marianne O'Kane Boal

Review on Kathy O’Leary's '5th Wheel Element Project' by Marianne O'Kane Boal

Kathy O’Leary’s practice is interrogatory and exploratory. It brings attention to process, community and shared perspectives. The work invites us to look at the familiar in a new way, from an alternative vantage point. We are encouraged to look closely at the overlooked, to appreciate that which we take for granted and to analyze our experience of time and space. It is part philosophical, part sociological, but all necessary, in terms of enquiry.

O’Leary employs a variety of art forms, practices and techniques to invite more comprehensive audience participation, as is befitting participatory practice. There is no room for passive viewing in ‘5^th Wheel Element Project.’ The title is important, the idea of the 5^th wheel points to the complicated extra dimension. Four wheels are necessary for balance and movement and what of the fifth? Yet the idea of five elements ties into psychology’s ‘Big Five personality traits,’ as highlighted by O’Leary; openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. It can also refer to the five senses – touch, smell, sight, taste and hearing – again crucial to the participatory experience of Kathy O’Leary’s work. 

The artist encourages us to understand her alternative point of view but there is nothing self-serving about this work. The inception of this project was a letter describing ‘Student X,’ through which the artist wished to highlight the experience of an unnamed person with a disability in an educational institution, where way finding and navigational routes had been formed without sufficient consideration of disabled access. Her experiment consisted of a Fire Drill Intervention at NCAD, where everyone engaging in the project had to navigate their way from upstairs within the building via wheelchair to the central concourse. O’Leary’s experiment was designed to tie in with Augusto Boal’s concept of ‘invisible theatre,’ where an event is planned but does not allow the spectators to know that the event is happening. It also highlights Boal’s central premise of the Theatre of the Oppressed, where the idea of the ‘spect-actor,’ means that audience members are invited ‘onstage,’ or to participate, as part of the drama. This allows participants to act out issues affecting their lives and inviting community members to translate these lessons into social action. This is exactly what O’Leary did at NCAD to great effect. 

‘Student X, Fire Drill Intervention' 2013

Photo by Lucy Estrada 

 

Her digital prints that include All Angles and Colours are designed to focus and challenge our perceptions. They point to the notion of multiple ways of looking and seeing, the lines of perception and enquiry. O’Leary explains these works are ‘based on invisible/visible lines of perception and perspectives that can relate to the psychological. The drawing I created was originally influenced by pylons that generate electricity unseen by the eye but we still know it is there, so ethereal as well.’

‘Clogging Cogs’ 

Her thought provoking piece ‘Clogging Cogs’ is an ingenious wall installation that uses a circular network of industrial cogs that are moved when an audience member pushes the wheel to set the cogs in motion. These cogs were sourced by the artist following a visit to her engineer to repair a broken axle on her wheelchair. The engineer did not have a use for these so gifted a substantial amount to O’Leary to allow her to create this interactive wall installation. 

 

Kathy O’Leary’s practice respects and proposes ‘the Golden Rule’ or ‘Ethic of Reciprocity.’ This familiar maxim which is found in the scriptures of almost every religion, states that ‘One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.’ This is a vital element of the artist’s socially engaged art. As Lynn Froggett has stated on this type of practice ‘through collaboration, participation, dialogue, provocation and immersive experiences...[socially engaged practice is designed to] widen audience participation.’ O’Leary embraces all these methods naturally and her work is testimony to this.

Marianne O’Kane Boal, October 2013

5th Wheel Element Project

 5th Wheel Element Project
1st – 3rd August | Preview: 1st August at 6pm
Pallas Projects/Studios, 115–117 The Coombe, Dublin 8
Gallery hours 12 – 6pm
5th Wheel Element Project involves creating dialogue through art, documentation and performance around the politics of participation. Installations that evoke and alternate the line between the real and the fictional are created. In 2013 I had applied for a grant for a Smartdrive to adapt and make life more manageable, in terms of access. Alas, I didn’t get the grant so I adapted the project and the “5th Wheel Element” has become an ethereal, collaborative, experimental and a subversive experience to challenge ‘outside the box’ and what is perceived as the norm is where the 5th Wheel Element Project allusion comes from. “Clogging cogs”, is the title of an audio and visual experience, wall piece that is amongst other interpretations as a part of the show.
To date my practice has been to use art as an experimental research tool to configure a language that speaks of inclusion. My concern and focus for this project is to develop and examine issues that relate to accessing urban landscapes which involve creating new aesthetics and concepts for my visual practice through capturing moments of light, satire and motion.  
5th Wheel Element Project is elaborated through a series of events including an exhibition and artist in-conversation with Marianne O’ Kane Boal, Art and Architecture Critic and Curator. http://www.aica.ie/members-3/marianne-okane-boal/