Artists’ Talk – Kelly O’Brien & Thomas Wynne – ‘Present Tense, Future Perfect?’

Artists’ Talk – Kelly O’Brien & Thomas Wynne – ‘Present Tense, Future Perfect?’ Artists’ Residency

Date & Time: Wednesday 2nd of December, 5pm – 6pm on ZOOM

Booking is Essential, Book on Eventbrite: https://bit.ly/3kEcpqS

View exhibition: https://ptfp.artcoregallery.org.uk

We’d like to invite you to join us for an in-conversation event with resident artists Kelly O’Brien and Thomas Wynne and Artcore’s Programme Producer David Gilbert.

Kelly and Tom were selected for the current residency at Artcore and started researching and making work at the beginning of October. They are developing work for exhibition – launching online in December and in Artcore Gallery early in the New Year. Through the residency, we wanted to give these two artists the opportunity to make new work dealing with the tensions caused by the current uncertainty and looking forward to a brighter future. Both artists are interested in alternative realities and fictional possibilities.

Tom has a background in photography, but is expanding his practice to include installation, sculpture, light, video and mirrors. Tom says “For this residency I want to think about the way that we may, in a not-too-distant future, inhabit another planet. Mars in particular. I have drawn some similarities recently; the COVID pandemic has been affecting the world for 9 months thus far, and it would take a manned mission 9 months to journey to Mars with our current propulsion systems. For both of these, stepping out into a new world is pertinent.” He has been exploring a huge variety of avenues: the Claude Glass; Greek mythology and the use of Greek heroes’ names in the titles of space missions; bees – particularly their vital role in pollination and so sustaining human life, and the danger that moving a bee colony may cause it to die; the Rolls-Royce rocket development archive from the 1950s to the 1970s; and how to make fire, both referencing Prometheus stealing fire to give to man, and the realisation that this is probably an essential for the continuation of human life on another planet.

Kelly has a background in documentary photography. Starting from her previous project –  http://areyouthere.uk – she is developing a new body of work which builds on the themes she previously explored. She describes her approach as “a collaboration between photography and clairvoyance to uncover information about my estranged and deceased father. Using the insights of clairvoyants and then translating it with photography to construct a narrative around my father, a story that would otherwise cease to exist. The drive behind making this work stems from a feeling of a lack of control within my historical narrative and landscape, which has a connection to the global pandemic and how we might experience it psychologically: where the majority of us are struggling with unpredictable change; a flux of confusing information which leads to insecurity on what our future (short and long-term) might look like.” Influenced by Susan Hiller, post-truth, Spiritualist churches and online clairvoyants, Kelly is working with the origami fortune teller as a pixel-like building block for a large-scale installation piece.