O’Mahony | Dowling | Page Performance Installation from Michael O’Mahony, Aislinn Dowling and Christopher Page. Michael O’Mahony creates an environment for his characters.
Using drawings, collected objects, and sculptures by artists Aislinn Dowling and Christopher Page, O’Mahony assembles a parallel O-O, designed and dominated by one of his alter egos.
The ‘detritus’ from this performance and the empty environment left by O’Mahony, will be open to public as an installation, featuring the work of the three artists.
Michael O’Mahony has been shortlisted for the Jerwood drawing prize 2010, and performed for LuckyPDF TV at Frieze 2011. O’Mahony combines his material practice with a performance of blurry personal narratives that often cross over into fantasy, conspiracy theory and self-help. Like all good snake-oil sellers O’Mahony’s performance of the professional personality maintains our belief of the work in his work – and so, with a perfectly minimal number of props, we are taken into a world where crisp-flavoured energy drinks really will help us to achieve our full daily-potential while at the same time the plausibility of our images of symbolic value collapse.
This insular practice, for O-O, is seeping out into an unusual form of collaboration. ‘Family’, the specific body of work by Dowling & Page, is for the first time, the central focus (or ‘props’) in O’Mahony’s environment.
“Promiscuous objects, they solicit touch, use, but are only to be admired. With colours both executive and soothing, these works of art shine in the home, the office, the hospital, the prison and the gallery. Using steel, wood, foam and paint, Dowling & Page transform the humble studio into the grand factory, producing items with the assurance of the standardized and the status of the unique.” *
Aislinn Dowling and Christopher Page both have individual practices. They collaborated for the first time on the ‘Family’ project last year, where it was shown for Brickhouse incarnation 7 at N/V_Projects in November-December 2011.
PERFORMANCE (open to public): 7.30pm Thursday 2nd August
GALLERY (INSTALLATION) OPEN: 12 – 5pm 3rd – 5th August
*Dowling & Page arcadiamissa.com/
Unit 6, Bellenden Road Peckham London SE15 4RF www.arcadiamissa.com
