Artwork by Seán L O'Neill - The News at One

Artwork by Seán L O'Neill

Birr-tual Reality

11/8/2020

The Birr Vintage Arts Festival is going ahead despite huge difficulties due to general restrictions on social gatherings and now the whole county of Offaly is in lockdown..
The visual art side is going to be a virtual exhibition, of real paintings, which can be seen on a computer screen near you from Friday the 14th August.
The renowned performance and installation artist Aideen Barry curated the exhibition with the theme of 'Narrating the New Normal' in mind.
I put in a painting I started in 2003, and finished this year, called 'Your Eyes Survived II'.
There's a link on the flyer below to the facebook page where the launch will be on at 6.30 on Friday, or if you're not on facebook, it'll be on the festival website too:
https://www.birrvintageweek.com/

Red Rose Cafe

30/4/2020

Painting on the mural in Clonskeagh Community Hospital was completed, a year ago, and I got around to photographing it recently. I was commissioned as part of The Butterfly Household Project, an initiative to encourage and support Healthcare centres to become more home-like, somewhere you'd want to hang out, and it's working very well. In Clonskeagh for example, staff now wear their own clothes on duty, and a lot of creative projects involving staff and the people who live there have happened.

Vive l'Art!
Seán
L
O'Neill

Celtic Triptych Done and Dusted

5/3/2020

A commission from a few years ago that is finished at last. Part of the reason it took so long was because I had to learn Celtic Calligraphy and it was also very different from the experimental expressive work I was doing at the time. I'm a firm believer in mixing it up, going on tangents always reinforces what the main purpose might be. While doing the i-pod on the left hand piece I remember thinking 'this is very contemporary right now for Celtic illumination but in a few years it will be obsolete.' I was right. Who uses those yokes now? Sound installation artists that's about all. With 5G rolling out as soon as they finish postponing the apocalypse in as profitable a way for themselves as possible, sure all we'll have to do is think of a song and a hologram of James Brown will appear in front of us belting out a high fidelity jam of 'Too Funky'. Hit it! God forbid btw- Hopefully there'll be a shift in consciousness to the effect that so called ordinary people take more priority and the rat race chills out and realises that they'll destroy all that's worth living for if they carry on with their greed fuelled egotistical financial gladiator game..

Adding Arduino to Light Lozenges

1/3/2020

The lightboxes that were shown In Birr were switched on and off manually. One had a timer switch like you plug a standard lamp into when you're going away on holidays so it looks like there's someone in. This only worked on one lightbox, the other two are rechargeable battery powered. Steam laboratories out in Greenogue industrial estate, Rathcoole do courses in electronics, robotics, and all that sort of thing, so I did an introductory course in Arduino (very versatile things for DIY electronics) there last Autumn. The Light Lozenges now come on for a couple of minutes, switch off for a minute then back on, a few times. Some other stuff happens, then eventually start flashing on and off several times a second for a couple of minutes. This simulates the effect of Brion Gysin's Dream Machine, which triggers hallucinations when looked at up close with eyes closed. It's mood enhancing too.

http://www.rexresearch.com/gysin/gysin.htm

http://www.steamlaboratories.ie

Affordable Art Show in 126 Gallery, Galway

15/12/2019

The 126 Gallery in Galway is a having an affordable art exhibition this Christmas.
They're raising funds for the day to day running of the space, which costs a fair bit as you can imagine.
Two Stamp-cells and a print of the pimped 1916 proclamation I did in 2016 are included in the show.
Drop in and have a peek if you're in town.
It's on till the 21st December.
Look up 126gallery.com for opening hours

'Jane deVille and Kamali'

Pimped Proclamation 1916-2016

'Video-Waves'

Loco Mosquito in McGing's Kintsugi Show in Westival

29/10/2019

All quiet on the exhibiting front the last while, been working full-time in a kitchen cooking for 12 people in a residential psychiatric facility. Has to be done..
Also studying a bit. Will squeeze out some more work into the wild soon as I get used to the 40-hour weeks (whose idea was that anyway?)
In the meantime the good people who organise Westival (formerly known as the Westport Arts Festival) are having their annual small works exhibition in McGings bar, and this year the theme is Kintsugi, meaning fragile/brittle and the word for the technique of mending broken pottery with gold or silver in the cracks.
Here's a photo of the assemblage I sent. Mosquitos can be seen as a threat but they're only tiny spindly yokes, which is in keeping with the Kintsugi idea.
The exhibition runs until Sunday the 3rd of November, McGing's bar, Westport.

Ghostlight and other Birr-illiant events

4/8/2019

Lozenges near readiness for launch

29/7/2019

Lozenges Stage II

Three days to go till the launch of Ghostlight in the BIrr Vintage Week Arts Fest (it's a totally brilliant concept putting vintage next to contemporary, in the village where astronomy, and it's practical spin-off, space exploration, was given a significant leg-up in the mid-19th Century). Another coat of emulsion and pop the Perspex glow in the dark acetate photos on and we're ready for lift-off! The mammy and baby lozenges on the right and left are rechargeable, the daddy, in the middle, will be hooked up to the mains. When the power is off, they'll glow from the phosphorescent pigment.
Delighted to be taking part in this, it's why I make art, so it can be included in bigger things that everyone can get something out of. And it coincides with my birthday.

Assemblages in Birr

20/7/2019

As well as the three Light-Lozenges which will be in the Ghost Light exhibition, I'll have a few assemblages on display as part of the Arts Trail in the Birr Vintage Week Arts Festival in early August.
https://www.birrvintageweek.com
I'm including a painting called 'Laughing at the Moon' which has my late Uncle's dentures among the objects attached to the surface, partly because Birr is very near where my father hailed from.
Another reason for including this one is the 50th anniversary of the moon landings, and the historic connection Birr has with astronomy- the telescope in Birr Castle was the largest in the world when it was made in 1845, and where the spiral nature of some galaxies was dicovered.
It's what Denis would have wanted.

'Laughing at the Moon' detail, mixed media on wood, 2016

Preparing Lightboxes for Birr

12/7/2019

The beautiful and historic town of Birr in Co. Offally will be hosting the Birr Vintage Week Arts Festival from the 2nd to the 10th of August. There'll be some spectacular offerings including Vintage Luminaries- light projections on historic buildings. That'll be on the opening night, Friday the 2nd. There's also gonna be a group exhibition on called Ghost Light in a vaulted crypt comprising light-based art, which I'm currently making these three lightboxes for.
It's going to be an honour exhibiting in my father's home town, not to mention the home town of what was once the world's largest telescope.

https://www.birrvintageweek.com/