VCA ART 2021

Nicholas O'Connell

Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours)

Centred on play and interaction, my practice functions as a way of mediating an experience for the viewer. Through participatory ‘playstallations’, I hope to open a dialogue that challenges pre-structured parameters through a childlike desire to break them.

My object-based works create playful moments of kinetic disturbance through their ever-changing nature, summoning a spatio-temporal exchange between viewer and object as they react in space. I question how an object holds your time, your breath, and transports you; how we feel connected through the spaces in which we move; how to join through the play of life and breathe with the lungs of the world, and to pass on that breath.

I extend respects to all First Nations peoples where I practice my art, in Narrm, on land of the Kulin Nation.

Nicholas O'Connell, DUN DUN DADA, DUN DUN DADA (installation view), hooks, string, 2021.
Nicholas O'Connell, Arrival, acrylic mirror, pine, spray, steel, streamers, string, venetian blinds, 2021.
Nicholas O'Connell, Installation view, from left to right Arrival & Sometimes I Just Float, 2021.
Nicholas O'Connell, Sometimes I Just Float, pine, spray, streamers, string, venetian blinds, 2021.
Nicholas O'Connell, 300M (playstallation view), audience, hooks, string, unrecording cameras, 2021.
Nicholas O'Connell, 300M (playstallation view), audience, hooks, string, unrecording cameras, 2021.
Nicholas O'Connell, Emergency, Exit (installation shot), Playstallation - audience, hooks, streamers, string, 2021. Documentation by ALEC.
Nicholas O'Connell, Sometimes I Just Float & Bending space, I enter time transmogrified (installation shot), 2021. Documentation by ALEC.

We acknowledge and pay respect to the Traditional Owners of the lands upon which our campus is situated, the Boonwurrung and Woiwurrung people of the Kulin Nations, who have created art, made music and told their stories here for thousands of generations. We also acknowledge and extend our respect to the Traditional Owners of all lands on which our work is viewed, shared and enjoyed, and to all Elders, past, present and emerging.

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