Objects and Intervals: An Expression of Art

Philip O’Reilly, a senior lecturer on the Art and Theory Matrix at UWIC’s Cardiff School of Art & Design, opens ‘Objects & Intervals: An Installation’ running until Sunday 4 November.

The exhibition at the UpFront Gallery, Cumbria, will feature ceramics, cast metal, digital print, mixed media and selected works. It follows on from Philip’s last popular exhibition ‘Material Colour’, which indicated his ongoing enquiry into the relationship between visual ideas and the materials used to express them. 

He explained: “What’s new in this exhibition is the presentation methodology and concept; that the artwork is conceived as an installation whereby the distinction between one group of parts and another are deliberately fused in the arrangement.  The materials also change identity, and in a subtle way, the strategy of applied colour changes with the forms and format.

“The transformation of materials and colour is central to the work. Allowing the medium some natural freedom, to express its identity, is fundamental to the choice of material or process. The artworks express their own identity and are accepted for what they are in these terms, whilst at one and the same time are redolent of some ‘otherness’, a subject beyond the object.

“The craft-led process of manufacturing hides the unseen influence of the ‘Digital Hub’ content. The ‘digital hub’ concept is currently at the centre of my research work. The digital aspect is being recycled through its application to new ideas and materials. There is a different attitude towards some work as ‘art-product’ that contrasts bona-fide craft techniques such as ceramics, with artworks entirely composed digitally and formed using new print media, including ‘fridge magnets’, ‘coasters’, ‘mugs’, and other commercial ‘ready-made’ graphic media and objects from the graphic presentation industry. Some works are made for the commercial fun of it!”