Micheál O'Connell / Mocksim 2021

Micheál O’Connell aka Mocksim 2021
Residency #1 | 27 March to 10 April 2021| Off-site
Residency #2 | 1 July to 2 August 2021| Studio 2

Micheál O’Connell / Mocksim’s second residency in preparation for an exhibition in 2022 runs throughout July. The plan is to consolidate and resolve work already in progress, whilst retaining the right to shift direction. Old fashioned artistic concerns like observation and appropriation have been key to the activities so far. Specifically, technology in the landscape, or the technological landscape is of interest. Pervasive digital effects, the impact of apps, algorithms, and even surveillance, but also the heavier machineries such as wind farms, traffic, even sport-related structures such as golf courses and balls of various sorts, are points of focus. The net has been cast wide and now it is time to home in. Likely outcomes include found objects as sculpture, moving image and time-based media.

One of The Arts Council’s substantial Commissions Awards has been granted to Micheál O’Connell to generate new work for a solo exhibition to take place at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre in 2022.

Micheál O’Connell a.k.a. Mocksim describes himself as a ‘systems interference artist’ (see http://www.mocksim.org/bio.htm). Appropriation art but also attempting to unearth the poetic in everyday, often dysfunctional, technologies, systems and bureaucracies are key for him.

He is being commissioned to produce new work related to the broader technological landscape, incorporating interests not only in the digital but how that is directly reflected in transformations of physical networks, transportation and heavier machineries. There’s a surreal, unashamedly comedic and provocative aspect to many of his outputs, with recent work focusing, for example, on the possibility of converting golf courses into wind farms.

The fact that the years ahead will be uncertain, and that any ‘new normal’ is likely to see institutions openly embracing blended dissemination, online exhibitions and events. O’Connell, given past initiatives, is well placed to consider definitions of locality and present new work in tune with the evolving situation.

We look forward to working with Micheál over the next 2 years, towards an exhibition that will account for the inevitability of this wider reach, but also address the value of human interaction with artworks and with others in the physical space at Uillinn.

Micheál’s first residency will be off-site. People may pay a virtual visit to Micheál in his UK studio through zoom.

Image by Tomasz Madajczak

WCAC acknowledges the financial support of the Arts Council and Cork County Council in making these residencies possible.