Kira O'Reilly

Telepresent Animal Hall of Fame, Artist

 

Kira O’Reilly is a UK based artist. Her practice, both willfully interdisciplinary and entirely undisciplined, stems from a visual art background; it employs performance, biotechnical practices and writing with which to consider speculative reconfigurations around The Body. Since graduating from the University of Wales Institute Cardiff in 1998 her work has been exhibited widely throughout the UK, Europe, Australia, China and Mexico. She has presented at conferences and symposia on both live art and science, art and technology interfaces. She has been a visiting lecturer in the UK and Australia and U.S.A in visual art, drama and dance. Between 2003 and 2004, O'Reilly undertook a residency with SymbioticA, a bio-art project based in the department of Human Anatomy, University of Western Australia. She has received several major commissions and in 2001 was invited to produce work for Span2 international performance art residency in London. Her recent work has involved animals, including leeches and pigs.

More information: http://www.kiraoreilly.com/blog/

Kira O'Reilly takes part in the Telepresent Animal Exhibition, February to May 2014.

Falling Asleep with a Pig

The Telepresent Animal Hall of Fame


Falling asleep with a pig creates a situation where a human animal (myself) and a non human animal (a pig, specifically Deliah, a Vietnamese Potbellied pig) share a specially designed and constructed dwelling for 36 hours (this first version was in one of the galleries at Cornerhouse, Manchester, January 2009) or 72 hours (this second version was outdoors at the A Foundation, London, October 2009). The dwelling mimics the white, clinical, modernist vocabulary of the art gallery, the gallery as laboratory. It tries to appropriate and deploy the obvious construction and conceit of this ‘neutrality’, impartiality and objectivity and to play with it as a mechanism and structuring device in which to arrange and to think about these two bodies in situ together. The duration of the work allows for Deliah and myself to enter into periods of sleep together, and for the positioning of us, two entirely similar mammals, to be considered in this most basic and fundamental of states common to mammals.

Videos

Kira O'Reilly
Lecture at FluxMedia

Kira O'Reilly's talk for Naked Matter

16 March 2012 at The Arts Catalyst

'Untitled' Syncope

Kira O'Reilly

Kira's other performances