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 ‘5th
Wheel Element Project.’ The title is important, the idea of the 5th
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
