KELLY O'BRIEN - EXPOSURE INTERNATIONAL OPEN CALL

Are You There?

There was a single moment of near contact with my father when I was 7 years old; as his hand suddenly reached through the letterbox of my mother's front door. He died 8 years after this brief encounter took place. It would take another 8 years until I would learn of his death, from the mouth of my grandma as we wandered through the aisles of our local supermarket.

Over the proceeding years, discovering information about my father proved near impossible, with family members only willing to reveal fragments of information about who he might have been and what he might have been like.

In an attempt to uncover this immaterial man I collaborate with clairvoyants to trace an impression of my estranged father. The information gathered is translated within a visual framework where psychic drawings, automated writing and the rituals and attempts to communicate with my father are integrated.

Are You There? explores the notion of perspective and what forms where there is an absence of evidence and a lack of control over personal circumstances. It acts as an opportunity to manifest the immaterial and the unseen, utilising the photographic ability to transcribe history and communicate what is invisible.

Delving into the concept that the “medium is the message” permits me to transcend the desire to have contact with a father that I can never physically meet. This methodology allows me to develop new ways to navigate and control an uncertain past, where findings are rooted in both fact and fiction, revealing a reimagined landscape that enables me to construct a lost and sacred relationship.

BIOGRAPHY

Documentary artist, working with photography, moving images and text. I am also a creative worker, lecturer and community arts facilitator. I was born in Derby (UK) and raised within a vibrant Irish emigrant working-class community. These people and spaces have been and remain the formative source of my education and the inspiration for my work.

I have developed a working methodology that has allowed me to explore visual transformation and storytelling through personal/political narratives and theory. I am concerned with the photographic relationship to absence, investigating how invisibility can be utilised as a tool of possibility and perception. The themes that anchor my work are class identity, hidden histories, the family, and the personal and the political.

Along with exploring how the expanding modes of documentary photography can be employed to visually manifest and represent the unseen. I am interested in the potential of experimental collaboration and participation, in both the production and the dissemination of my work.

I have been the recipient of several awards and my work has been exhibited and published internationally. I have over 10 years of experience as a community arts educator/producer focusing on social justice and equity. With this, I lecturer in photography working in partnership with universities and art institutions both within the UK and internationally.