Pauline O'Connell: When a Gap Becomes an Aperture

Opening: Saturday, 31 July, 2021, 7-10 pm

Artists Introductions on
Tuesday, 3 August, 2021, 6 pm
Saturday, 7 August, 2021, 6 pm
Thursday, 12 August, 2021, 6 pm

Visit until Sunday, 22 August, 2021
on appointment: info@sternstudio.at

Pauline O’Connell (b. Dublin 1971) is a visual artist based between rural County Kilkenny, Ireland and Amsterdam. She studied Fine Art, Mixed Media at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art Design and Technology (1988-92) and received a 1st class honours M.A. in Social Practice and the Creative Environment at Limerick School of Art and Design (2012).
She is completing a PhD at the University of Amsterdam, School of Heritage, Memory and Material Culture.

The exhibition comprises a series of newly created works ranging from a choreographic textual neon work, a large-scale photographic panorama, a wooden sculpture and an artist’s book.
At the centre is (t)here (2020-2021) - a green neon wall- mounted text work whose central element - a constant, is here - which is always ‘on’. Shifting perspectives are presented through a series of accumulations - questions and positions: here, (t)here, where?, nowhere, now (t)here, now here, here? This ‘on/off’ sequence tells its own story where the politics of narrative – whereby authority is afforded to those who employ it can maintain power over those subject to it - can be analysed, deconstructed and translated. This work acts as a prompt through which conversations can be catalysed. It is, therefore, unfinished in that sense. It creates a space for further enquiry, for discussions across and between rurals constituted by multiple, similar and contradictory identities, geographies and lifeworlds.