Introduction
Micheál O' Connell, also known by his online alias "Mocksim", has submitted a very avant-garde piece for this year's exhibition. This is a submission which encompasses the gallery unlike every other: "Nothing".
Interview with Micheál O' Connell
1. What inspired your submission for this year's "Members and Friends" Exhibition, and were there any particular people, places, experiences or events that influenced it?
There was no theme this year. If there had been, that would have been a factor. But there wasn't. I'm not that interested in everyday presumptions about what constitutes art. For the most part the word conjures up the expectation of rectangular things hung on walls, these being unlikely pictures based on some virtual reality often, and making use of a limited, proscribed, set of materials, and they are often framed.
Ordinary ideas about the importance of craft - once again usually taken to mean a preordained and very limited set of activities - can irritate too. These are hardly radical gestures to be making here. Think of Victor Burgen's famous words from back in the 1970s about painting as 'the anachronistic daubing of woven fabrics with coloured mud' and something more about so called sculpture, come to mind.
We are well into the 21st century now and highly industrialised technological society, factory production, began emerging a few hundred years ago. Long before AI, artists recognised that particular kinds of skills had been undermined, but replaced by other ways of engaging with an ever-changing situation. Selection, and decision making are very important. Picking something out. And maybe 'thinking' is important to defend. I'm fond of Hannah Arendt.
2. What led you to choose the medium used for your work? How did it help you express your ideas?
As a child, my friend Frank O'Keefe and I were committed to doing things the difficult way, rather than the easy way. For example we would walk along the rock by Myrtleville and Fountainstown but choose the more challenging route up steep parts and so on. No following the line of least resistance can be valuable in life, and politically, I later realised.
Anyway for the purposes here I want to do something more difficult than simply submit another rectangle. I wanted to avoid the suggestion that visual is important - though visual is unavoidable too. Wheeling Duchamp in here again, who long ago dismissed this fixation on the retinal, as if artists were people with bigger better eyes or something.
I'll admit that more could have been done to hone and perfect this piece. There are some flaws in how I described the work, some inconsistencies, and given that the description is so important to the work - some would argue all that it is - that's an issue.
3. What do you hope viewers take away from your work? Whether emotionally, intellectually or otherwise.
I have no hopes for viewers to be honest. More precisely it depends on who they are. They are not viewers anyway because there is, arguably, nothing to view. It's quite a boring and unoriginal work in one sense. I wait to see. It tickled me but now I see some flaws.
I'd give it 65% out of 100 if I were marking it. Not bad, a good B grade. Perhaps viewers could assess the works?
4. Did your original vision for this piece change during its creation? If so, how and why?
Yes, because the volume of the holding space is always different. The piece therefore has a different volume and mass here. I modified the description slightly too I think. The original work was shown 6 years ago in fact. Here's a documentary pic with description: https://www.flickr.com/photos/68898173@N05/49399396547/in/album-72157712711008063/
5. What do you wish people asked you more about your work?
I don't really have any wishes. It might vary though. Re one piece in a show there in 2022, called Car Parked, an upside-down Toyota Yaris, a passer by asked, 'C'meeer, it that car or is it art?' The question took me by surprise and I quickly answered, 'It's both'. They were visibly delighted with the response, and the idea that something could be two things at once.
