Hugh O'Donnell
Hugh O’Donnell’s work is Performance/Drawing and Installation.
It starts with an object, any object; it could be a toilet or a tin can.
I then see an image or a shape that becomes a drawing or at least the start of one.
The object is appropriated into my artistic thinking and then something happens…I think of the room that I could be in or a space outdoors. I begin to draw and within my studio this drawing takes the format of being on the wall or the floor or in the notebook that is small enough to fit into my pocket.
The intuitive way of drawing and planning of the performance happens so quickly that it changes rapidly, not always representing the performance in question.
Materials always seem to fuel an action, or the amount of material used decides on how long the performance will be.
Thinking and thinking and thinking, then drawing and doodling and thinking again after seeing that nice wig in the shop near the Albert clock.
Sounds and noises are interesting. Shush, bucket barking, sawing into a table, hammering the table, the echoes that are made from a performance that happened in an underground space where trains pass over head. The sound of a chair being scraped and dragged across a concrete floor. The sound of a red toilet smashing of the side of a skip on College Street in Belfast.
How many times do I have to tell myself that what I do is o.k.?
How many times do I expose my thoughts to the outside of my body?
ARTIST BIO
I was born and bred in Dublin, Tallaght.
After I completed a Diploma in Art Design and Mixed Media in Dublin. I decided to do a Foundation in Art and Design at the University of Ulster Belfast. After this I completed a Degree in Fine and Applied Art and a while after that I completed an M.F.A Masters in Fine Art at the University of Ulster Belfast. I currently live and work in Belfast and have a studio at Queen Street Studio’s Belfast. I am a member of the Bbeyond Committee and have exhibited my work Nationally and Internationally in places such as TRACE Installaction Art Space Cardiff Wales, ETNA Foundation Romania Transylvania, Le Lieu Quebec City, IMAF Mas Gallery Serbia, Le Sala Naranja Valencia Spain, 411 Gallery China.
Future exhibitions include ARES: Romanian/Irish Performance Exchange; Rub Me up the Wrong Way Norwich Art Centre England.
BONE Festival Switzerland and IMFA Mas Gallery Serbia.