Othering
Margaret O’Brien
7 – 23 February 2014
Opening: 6-9pm on Thursday 6th February
Artist Talk: 2pm, Saturday 15th February
Margaret O’Brien’s practice explores the hypothesis of repetition in art as a mechanism of semiotic destabilization. Through immersive installation and sculpture, O’Brien uses aspects of repetition as a visual or performative device that undermines a potential otherwise context or interpretation. This approach is not prescriptive and each work demonstrates an experimental use of materials or media that disturb a pre-existing or familiar relationship to the object. Within this practice, O’Brien is also concerned with boundaries between the physical and the psychological in the apprehension and negotiation of objects, and the conditions of time and space.
Othering continues with this research through an inventive sculptural installation. To ‘other’, or othering (verb), is a key concept in Continental philosophy, and opposes concepts of Same. The Other refers, or attempts to refer to that which is other than the self, that which is different. Othering helps distinguish between internal and external, between home and away, the certain or uncertain, the physical and psychological. Using non-traditional materials, O’Brien’s Othering makes manifest intangible but critical aspects of the work including sound and visual elements from live electrical circuits.
O’Brien graduated with MFA from The Slade School of Fine Art, London and with MPhil from Trinity College Dublin. She is currently a PhD candidate at The Irish Art Research Centre, TCD and lectures in Fine Art at NCAD, Dublin and CCAD, Cork. Recent residencies include Centre Culturel des Irlandais, Paris (2013); Dublin City Council Residency (2013-2014); Fire Station Artists Studios, Dublin (2008-2011). Recent exhibitions include Nonknowledge, nag gallery, Dublin 2013; Polemically Small, Torrence Art Museum, Los Angeles 2013; Invite or Reject, Flux Factory, New York 2012.