| I am an Irish artist who lives in Los Angeles. I have lived and worked in New York City, Italy, Belfast, and Dublin. My work is included in many European and Irish collections, public and private. Initially recognized as a painter, I have in recent years produced a consistently strong body of video-based work. My piece Vesuvius (2007) was included in the inaugural exhibition at the DCP Project Space in San Francisco in September 2007. My solo exhibition at DCP in February explores the theme of duality through video, sculpture, and sound. The exhibition consists of installation-based work, photographs, and videos, including Tornado (2008). | 
|
Simon Reilly
Simon Reilly, Cause and Effect, 2008. Stills from installation. Courtesy of the artist.
I am an Irish artist who lives in Los Angeles. I have lived and worked in New York City, Italy, Belfast, and Dublin. My work is included in many European and Irish collections, public and private. Initially recognized as a painter, I have in recent years produced a consistently strong body of video-based work. My piece Vesuvius (2007) was included in the inaugural exhibition at the DCP Project Space in San Francisco in September 2007.
My solo exhibition at DCP in February explores the theme of duality through video, sculpture, and sound. The exhibition consists of installation-based work, photographs, and videos, including Tornado (2008). Projected on the surrounding walls, German shepherds stand guard around the pulsing column of a video image of a tornado, (from a tornado-generating machine). A sense of doom pervades, yet through this a reassurance surfaces. The tornado is dangerous yet precious and vital; the dogs guard the whirling mass of air, and we, as observers, are both a threat to the sentries and in need of their protection. Shroud (2008) is a large aquarium that holds a small street of houses on a sliver of land surrounded by water; two monitors show different views from within the houses. Both seem to be watching each other as a blanket of fog eerily envelops this tiny street, and then recedes, like a giant wave washing over again and again. The ominous imagery is diluted by the humorous prying eyes of the tiny cameras hidden in each of the houses. In Cause and Effect (2008), two monitors, mounted one above the other, show a mountain and a body of water, respectively. A figure walks to the mountaintop with a large stone in his hand and drops the stone. The figure peers over the side to watch, as the observer’s eye is also drawn to the lower monitor, waiting. A disconcerting few seconds pass before we see the rock splash into the water. The actions are played on a loop, which slowly moves out of sync, until inevitably the splash precedes the throw.
There are underlying themes in my work, especially the interactions between the spirit and power of nature with the spirit and power of human nature, in both positive and negative ways.
“I would begin with the Greek word, omphalos, meaning the navel, and hence the stone that marked the center of the world, and repeat it, omphalos, omphalos, omphalos, until its blunt and falling music becomes the music of somebody pumping water at the pump outside our back door.”—Seamus Heaney, Mossbawn
