Menopause Gym
Kira O´Reilly
Performing on the edge of can and can't.
Part sculpture, installation, performance art; performing strange circuits, bad balancing and ungainly suspensions. Actions, objects, sweaty coppery prints. An accumulation of Detritus forming as the menopausal gym is activated.
Kira O'Reilly's artistic work is made possible by the Arts Promotion Centre.
Kira O'Reilly (b. 1967) is an Irish artist based in Helsinki, her practice works with multiple media including performance art, installation, sculpture, biotechnical practices and writing with which to consider speculative reconfigurations around The Body. She makes, writes, teaches, mentors and collaborates with humans of various types and technologies and non-humans of numerous divergences. Her practice has developed across several contexts from visual art, performance art, live art and dance, to interfaces of art, science, technology and ecology.
Since graduating from the University of Wales Institute Cardiff in 1998 in Fine Art in time-based arts, she has exhibited widely throughout Europe and internationally, also presenting at conferences and symposia on performance and live art, science, art and technology.
In October 2004 she completed an honorary research fellowship and residency at SymbioticA, the art science collaborative research lab, School of Anatomy and Human Biology, University of Western Australia, funded by a Wellcome Trust sciart research and development award. She was concerned with exploring convergence between contemporary biotechnical tissue culturing and traditional lace making crafts, using skin at its cellular level as material and metaphor. She continued and expanded these investigations as an Honorary Research associate and artist in residence in the School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham in collaboration with Dr Janet Smith, funded by Wellcome Trust where she investigated using spider silk and bone, muscle and nerve cell cultures as biomedia, and the relations between tissue, text and textile as variants on the theme of techné. In 2013 she completed an AHRC funded creative fellowship at Department of Drama, Queen Mary University of London developing performance works, Untitled Techné that hung between the laboratory and the gallery.
She has been a visiting lecturer in Europe, Australia and U.S.A in visual art, drama and dance departments. In 2016 she moved to Helsinki to lead a pilot master programme in ecology and contemporary performance at University of the Arts Helsinki 2016 - 2018. In the spring semester 2020 she was the Randall International Chair in sculpture, School of Art and Design, Alfred University, New York where she worked with students and faculty in the unexpected navigation and implementation of pandemic pedagogies and art making strategies in performance, ecology and social sculpture.
The monograph Kira O'Reilly: Untitled (Bodies), edited by Harriet Curtis and Martin Hargreaves was published in 2017 by Live Art Development Agency and Intellect Live in the series Intellect Live. She is a member of the Bioart Society and co-editor of Art As We Don't Know It, which marked ten years of the societies activities, Aalto Arts Books, 2020 by speculating on the futures of art and science practice.
During 2023 she was one of the artists selected to participate in Metabolic Artists Gatherings, an initiative by Medical Museum, Copenhagen to explore the idea of Metabolic Arts through six meetings throughout 2023. Discussions, talks, readings and presentations approached metabolism from multiple perspectives and scales.
In 2023, she reperformed the continuous 12 day performance art work, The House with the Ocean View work as part of the acclaimed exhibition Marina Abramovic, Royal Academy of Art, London.
Photo by Ada Gogo
SCHEDULE
14.9. from 14.00 to 17.00
15.9. from 14.00 to 17.00
LOCATION
Mad House Helsinki, Lintulahdenkatu 3, Helsinki
TIME
3h
Audience can enter and leave at any time during the performance.