Oran O'Reilly | Phobos, 2022

111 x 110 cm

Unique Work

Oran O’Reilly’s work utilises discarded objects to explore our ongoing impact on the environment. The process of woodcut is utilised in a selenographic way, tracing scars, disfigurations and impressions. The intensive methodology engages with time to instil memory, whilst the physicality of the process acts as an archive for the object’s history and fragility and through its transformation becomes a metaphorical suggestion of the ephemerality of our environment. The moons Phobos and Deimos have circled Mars for millennia. Phobos, rotating on an ever-decreasing trajectory will eventually collide with Mars leaving Deimos to orbit alone. This momentous example of fragility leads us to consider our own fleeting existence. This work takes abandoned footballs that have been found in the East End of London and through processes of mapping and recording make a connection between the micro and the macro, the everyday and the ethereal, the ordinary and the extraordinary. O’Reilly graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2001 with an MA in Fine Art Printmaking. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including London, New York and San Francisco. Highlights include the Xuyan International Print Biennial, Beijing, China 2016 and Haugesund International Print Festival, Norway in 2019.