CARMEL O'BRIEN: CARMEL O'BRIEN

LEATHER AND LATEX: MATERIALS, MORALS AND SUBCULTURAL STYLE

CCA, Glasgow

April 2018

‘Leather and Latex: Materials, Morals and Subcultural Style’ is a one-day workshop focused on the subject of material as a means to approach histories of subcultural style. Involving archivists, conservators, theorists and practitioners the day expands upon the social meanings and political potentialities surrounding these two materials and how they might be historicised and preserved.

The day included contributions from Grace Biggins, an archivist working with the Leather Archives UK held at Bishopsgate Institute; fashion designer Theresa Coburn; Dr Anita Quye who has published widely on the preservation of synthetics; artists Carmel O'Brien & Craig Mulholland (HommAges) and a keynote from fashion anthropologist Ted Polhemus, whose seminal work has celebrated the ways that subcultures have shaped fashion and style has transformed culture over the past four decades.

PRIVY INTIMATIONS

Solo exhibition by Carmel O'Brien

Glasgow Project Room

31st March - 7th April 2018

Photography by Natalie McGowan

With

Madeleine Virginia Brown: Performance

Craig Mulholland: Editing & Animation

Natalie McGowan: Camera & Editor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYlpVViKW1o

This project was a continued exploration of applied surfaces that act as intersections between layered paint and artificial skin, resulting in a fusion of fashion, painting and sculpture, through the development of techniques using liquid mate- rials. My aim was to create sensual textured objects that can function like a tactile writing system, as though transmit- ting optical and tactile information, focusing on haptic perception, which integrates sensory information from touch, that cannot be fully gained from looking at an object (such as hardness, texture, temperature and weight), which provides spatial and motor information. The garments and sculptures bypass traditional pattern- making techniques, through the transformation of a liquid material, into durable and wearable constructions, where intaglio processes and embossments act as both a form of embellishment and signal carrier. The messages are representative of texting (sexting) abbreviations, forming a coded communication system as though to relay secret messages, transgressing a highly censored or prohibitive environment.

AS YOU WERE

Opera Autonoma

Glasgow International 2016

Photography by Pavel Dousek

Directed by Sukaina Kubba & Carmel O'Brien
Costume, Sculpture & Installation Design: Sukaina Kubba & Carmel O'Brien

http://www.operaautonoma.org/#!news/aboutPage

http://glasgowinternational.org/events/opera-autonoma-2016/

AS YOU WERE was a multi-disciplinary production and installation that involves a critical examination of militaristic power relations and their sublimation by fashion and the wider culture industry. Uniforms and a modular mise-en-scene serve as a means of suppressing individuality, concealing hierarchy and gender, and as symbolic devices.

Video & Sound: Craig Mulholland
Performer: Madeleine Virginia Brown
Camera: Michelle Hannah, Ingrida Danieliute.

MORTEM SIMULANS

Kinteic installation with automated cast and constructed garment sculptures, with symbiotic sound. Design and Fabrication of Latex Costume Sculpture for Collaborative with Sukaina Kubba

July 2015

Glasgow

Photography by Pavel Dousek

GWENAN INTERKUBBA

Design and Fabrication of Latex Costume Sculpture for Collaborative

Installation with Sukaina Kubba

December 2014

Glasgow

Photography by Pavel Dousek

GYMNASIA

Performance, Collaboration, Design and Fabrication of Costumes / Sculptures

with Craig Mulholland for Opera Autonoma

Glasgow International Arts Festival

4th - 21st April 2014

Fleming House, Glasgow

Supported by Outset, Scotland & The Glasgow School Of Art

Photography by Ingrida Danielute

MADamE B

Solo exhibition

7th - 23rd November 2013

Iota, 25 Hyndland Street, Glasgow G11 5QA

Supported by Glasgow City Council

Photography by Michelle Hannah