Stephen Loughman & Mark O'Kelly at the Galway Arts Centre

Stephen Loughman & Mark O'Kelly

07/12/2007 - 26/01/2008

With this exhibition it was the curator Maeve Mulrennan’s intention to exhibit the work of Mark O’Kelly and Stephen Loughman together to confront ideas of human activity, collective history and the juxtaposition of real and imagined memories. There is a contradiction between works filled with people and those where it feels as if we are still anticipating activity or have just missed it. It is hoped that this uneasy tension leads the viewer through the exhibition and destabilises any preconceived ideas of a linear narrative.

Absence and traces of human activity and interaction juxtaposed within Stephen Loughman’s cinematic investigations create an uncanny narrative for the viewer to unearth. This ambiguity within the narrative is further extended by the titles of Loughman’s work. His investigation of cinema and the uneasy balance between ambiguity and iconography within film lead us to reflect on our own personal history and how these iconic films that we think we know so well may not be so familiar after all.

Loughman’s cinematic tensions sit alongside the work of Mark O’Kelly. A pre-emptive tension is also apparent in O’Kelly’s paintings. We explore interconnecting trinities of people / characters, individuals in a crowd, viewers being viewed. Are we an objective outsider or part of O’Kelly’s environments; are we being watched? O’Kelly introduces us to everyday environments and asks us to contemplate relationships of people and space, has something happened or are we about to witness something out of the ordinary?

An unusual pairing at first, both artists’ works are hung in the gallery to explore a narrative that is a mercurial, ever-changing concept, not a pre-destined path for the viewer to follow. Images of the everyday are held up as iconic: a crowd gathered for a concert, street performers, a film scene waiting for action. It is within this everyday that real life occurs: human fears, desires and complexities of relationships are acted out; whether in Loughman’s cinematic spaces or O’Kelly’s contemporary, lived-in environment.


Hugo Hamilton, who wrote the essay for the accompanying catalogue, considers popular culture and how we have re-defined ideas of real and imagined experience: “This dual exhibition of new work by Stephen Loughman and Mark O’Kelly provides solid proof that we perceive ourselves mostly in second hand logic, removed from reality, shaped increasingly by the cultural and media events to which we bear witness.”

Hamilton goes on to explore both artist’s use of the notion of the contemporary voyeur, and how more and more we see ourselves and each other in terms of the media, be that You Tube, reality television and tabloid gossip. Hamilton states;
“While each of these two artists have their own unique ways of exploring this vital distance between ourselves and our reality, they both confirm the powerful truth that we are beings reflected in a cultural trade, in newspaper gossip, in televised portrayals, in half remembered movies. Nothing is real, not until it is reported.”

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