Author: m.o.b
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‘Becoming No One’, O’Briens solo show at the end of his residency in Perla National Gallery of Art, Prague. The year was 2017…
The artist had just started a 3-year residence term in the Johns Square ‘Living cultural quarter’ artist’s apartments, granted by the Limerick city & county council based on artistic merit. O’Brien was also venturing off to Prague to live and work in Perla National Gallery of Art for one month and to then exhibit the…
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PUBLICATION: Umelec Magazine, Beth Fox interviews Mike O’Brien (2016)
The following are excerpts from an interview with Mike O’Brien by Beth Fox, for Umelec Magazine, Issue 1 of 2016, published in London, Prague & Berlin: _________________________________________________________________________________ ‘MIKE O’BRIEN TOUCH(ED) ME’ Im on the tube on the way to work and sitting opposite me there’s this man in a suit eating a Cadbury’s Creme Egg.…
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‘Touch Me’, MOB’s solo show in Divus Gallery London (2013)
This was O’Brien’s first solo show outside of Ireland, in DIVUS London, Enclave 5, London, UK. It was curated by fellow artist Beth Fox, who he had been in the same Sculpture & Combined Media degree with in the Limerick School of Art & Design, Ireland. Here are excerpts of some of the the artist’s…
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‘Superstar’, MOB’s solo show juxtaposing worldly and spiritual identity, in the context of everyday life and pop culture (2013)
Once again, the artist used a school desk appropriated from Salesian Secondary School, an all-girls school in Limerick, across the road from where he attended an all-boys secondary school, painted black and this time with a striking combination of materials inside; Red Korean Hanji paper (a traditional hand made paper O’Brien grew fond of using…
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What was O’Brien’s first solo show like you ask!?… It was in a former Franciscan’s Friary, hundreds of drawings filled opened-up school desks, beside towering wooden sculptures. Opened by Nigel Rolf, the year was 2010…
The old wooden desks were sourced from the all-girls Salesian Secondary School, which happened to be right across the road from the all-boys secondary school O’Brien had attended, Ard Scoil Rís, both single-sex Catholic schools. Beside these desks stood two minimalist figurative sculptures, on a relatively large scale that expressed the artists fascination with pondering…
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‘Mike TV’, Public performance art for the punk within (2009)
In 2007, while still in art college, in the first year of his major in Sculpture & Combined Media, O’Brien brought the old family home television to the Georges Quay campus of the Limerick School of Art & Design. He then gutted it hollow and politely asked the course technician Pat Beasley to help him…