Eamon O’Kane
CASE HISTORIES
Plans For The Past and The Future
and The Container Studio
9 January – 15 February 2009
Plan 9,
Bridewell Island,
Nelson Street, Broadmead, Bristol, UK
Plan 9 is pleased to present Plans For The Past and The Future and The Container Studio, two exhibitions of new commissioned work by Irish artist Eamon O’Kane that form part of the international touring project CASE HISTORIES.
O’Kane’s installation at Plan 9 will consist of a furniture workshop/studio in the gallery space where authentic replicas of chairs and tables from the 1600s will be constructed gradually during the course of the exhibition. This furniture will resemble the type of chairs and tables used during a meal for King James II in 1689 under a Sycamore tree at what is now O’Kane’s parents’ house in Ireland. The furniture will be made out of the tree itself, which was hit by lightning in 1999. A large-scale wall drawing of the tree, and text works relating to the history of the house will also be included in the installation.
The Container Studio is a development of the ‘Mobile Studio’ work for which O’ Kane received an EV+A open award from Dan Cameron in 2005. This work, which will be situated off-site in Bristol city centre, consists of a shipping container converted into a studio space where O’Kane will investigate the architecture and urban planning of Bristol over the years using Le Corbusier’s plans for Paris as a blueprint.
Plans For The Past and The Future is part of the project CASE HISTORIES, a series of international exhibitions of new commissioned work by Rugby Art Gallery and Museum; Contemporary Art Society and Economist Plaza, London; RARE Gallery, New York; Galerie Schuster, Berlin; Plan 9, Bristol, and ArtSway, New Forest. The exhibition is funded by Arts Council England and Bristol City Council, and is supported by Culture Ireland.
CASE HISTORIES will travel to ArtSway in the New Forest in summer 2009. Re-enactment, the title of the exhibition at ArtSway and the sixth and final leg of the touring project, will feature new commissioned installation and video works. Using the 17th Century style furniture produced in Bristol, O’ Kane will stage in the New Forest a re-enactment of the meal James II had under the Sycamore tree in Ireland. This will take place on the 20th of April 2009, 420 years after the original meal. The furniture will be installed in the gallery space with two video installations documenting the re-enactment.
Eamon O’Kane (b. 1974) has studied in Dublin, Belfast and New York. He has exhibited widely and is the recipient of many awards and scholarships including the Taylor Art Award, The Tony O’Malley Award and a Fulbright Award. He has shown in exhibitions curated by Dan Cameron, Lynne Cooke, Klaus Ottman, Salah M. Hassan, Jeremy Millar, Mike Fitzpatrick, Sarah Pierce, Jeanne Greenberg-Rohatyn and Apinan Poshyananda. In 2006 he was short-listed for the AIB Prize and received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. He was short-listed for the Jerwood Drawing Prize in London in 2007. His artwork is in numerous public and private collections worldwide including Deutsche Bank; Burda Museum, Baden Baden, Germany; Sammlung Südhausbau, Munich and Limerick City Gallery. Eamon completed a three-month residency at Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris in 2008.
Eamon O’Kane will be in conversation with Paul Hobson, Director, Contemporary Art Society, at Plan 9 on Thursday 29 January 2009 at 6pm.
A publication documenting the CASE HISTORIES project will launch at ArtSway in 2009.
Press Contact:
Karen Di Franco, Press Officer, Plan 9
T: +44 (0)7817590647
E: karen@plan9.org.uk
