Margaret O'Brien Merseyside, United Kingdom
I am a visual artist - BA (Limerick School of Art), MFA (Slade School of Art, London), MPhil and PhD (Trinity College Dublin). I have won public funding from state bodies such as Arts Council of Ireland, Arts & Humanities Research Board UK, and Irish Research Council. My work is held in public collections including Arts Council of Ireland; Allied Irish Bank; GE Aviation; and AXA Insurance.
I work with immersive installation - combinations of sculpture, live sound, light, moving image and kinetics. My approach to materials is experimental, producing works that often operate within a live state of malfunction or breakdown. The precarious nature of these works explores ideas of failure as an everyday experience through feelings of uncertainty, unease, discomfort, and instability prompted by the work.
I build a psychological charge through the physics of the artwork, frequently developing raw, incidental sound through the physics of the material. Electricity becomes a sculptural, kinetic material with its own intrinsic sound. I explore the conditions of possibility and impossibility of the material, stretching its potential into unpredictable spaces.
Although large scale, the installations are engineered by hand and often feature overwhelming repetition. This manifests as vast multiples of the same object or through repetitive processes of manufacture. I am interested in the impact of repetition on the spatial and temporal experience when viewing the work.
