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Sally O'Reilly PERFORMANCES | ||
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Dog Shelves (Various) I A performance involving five cover versions of floors, remade at tabletop scale. This first iteration (of what could be a long-running series) featured floors from: The eight-minute-long performance ran on a loop throughout the evening, between other performances in Big Throw, at Matt's Gallery, December 2024.
Even at Home We are Never Alone
Adaptation Station The original literature is a collection of pamphlets and guidebooks from niche disciplines
The Ends II In a culture of over-production, planned obsolescence, fast fashion and automation, When clearing out her parents’ house, Sally O’Reilly discovered boxes and cupboards Rescued once more from the house-clearer’s skip, these objects-turned-mimics,
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I Hear Horses
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Absurdity: Colouring the Void |
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Convivium Readings
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The Doubting Colloquy
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Live Illuminated Manuscript 3: Four Legs Good Modern Art Oxford 24 November 2016 with musician Chris Vatalaro ![]() Four Legs Good is a speculative fiction/musical exploring the possiblity that chairs were once sentient creatures. It comprises videos, spoken word, midi-triggered sounds and images, with percussion and singing by Chris Vatalaro. |
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The Ends The School of Death, Pompidou Centre, Paris 13 October 2016 with musician Corentin Chassard ![]() The Ends is a multi-disciplinary study in how to end well. It brings together final scenes of films that end on the beach, closing movements in orchestral music invoking the sea and final sentences from novels with watery themed titles. See the full list of materials used here. Music played by Corentin Chassard; arranged from full orchestra to solo cello by Matt Rogers. Films remembered and sourced by John-Paul Gandy. Image: final scene from Robert Hossein, Point de chute, 1970. |
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All The Chest Messages 24 & 25 September 2016 Bathurst Pool, Lydney, Gloucestershire ![]() I wore all the slogan T-shirts found in a charity shop – 37 in all – with the small children's ones closest to the skin and building up to the largest men's ones on top. I then proceeded, for two hours, to strip off the T-shirts one by one; then, on reaching the smallest, I put them back on; then took them all off again, then put them all back on again... |
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The Annual Retrieval 10 &11 September 2016 Bathurst Pool, Lydney, Gloucestershire ![]() The Annual Retrieval featured in the exhibition that marked the end of the 2015 Blackrock + Matt's Gallery residency programme. It was a ritualistic tableau and textual montage in which items procured from local charity shops were offered to Mars Nodens, the Roman god of healing. Duration 40mins. Read the full script here. Photograph by Rupert Bathhurst. |
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Live Illuminated Manuscript 2: In The End You Will Always Love Me & The Dinner Modern Art Oxford August 2016 with musician Kit Downs ![]() In The End You Will Always Love Me was made using the final sentences of essays published inModern Art Oxford exhibition catalogues over the last twenty years. It emphasised the often near-messianic capacities writers afford art, and artists, in these unconditionally supportive texts. Duration: 10 mins. The Dinner was a dramatised reading of a text written in response to a dinner invitee list found in the archive box for a 1996 exhibition 'The Director's Eye', which marked the cetenary of European Cinema and included well-known film directors' visual material. The performance was an imagined reconstruction of the toasts given at the dinner, with directors expressing their interests, asserting their ideologies and flexing their egos. Duration: 30 mins. The Dinner was performed with musician Kit Downes on the harmonium. Photograph: Stu Allsop |
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Live Illuminated Manuscript 1: Police Control Modern Art Oxford February 2016 with musician Emma Smith ![]() A musical theatrical performance devised from a rare piece of grey literature: a 1971 programme for the Special Constabulary's Inter-divisional Competition. Made and performed with musician Emma Smith. The first in a series of performances for a year-long writing residency at Modern Art Oxford. Read the programme note here. Photograph: Stu Allsop |
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The Dolly Mixtures Infernal Gallop October 2015 Peckham Pelican, London ![]() The Dolly Mixtures at the Can-Can Finalé Cabaret at the Literary Kitchen Festival. |
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Blushing as involuntary self-publication: an experiment in one-sidedness July 2015 Bold Tendencies, London ![]() A performative lecture and experiment, presented as part of a Cabinet event at Copeland Book Market. |
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Portunalia 2014 Peer, London
Photograph: Tommy Ting |
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Manual Flasher 2013/14 Camden Arts Centre, London; Z33, Hasselt, Belgium; Moderna Museet, Stockholm. ![]() A satin dress and evening gloves, decorated with nipples and a merkin, create a fleeting image of a naked lady whenever the arms perform a cover-up gesture. |
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Catachresis in Pieces 2012 Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Bournemouth University. ![]() Performative lecture on styles of political rhetoric, delivered in dialogue with a projected video. Performed at Rietveld Academy as part of 'We Are The Time’. |
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A Slight Misunderstanding 2011 Hanbury Salon, London ![]() Quick change performance of A Sutherland's A Slight Misunderstanding, a play in one act, 1931. |
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Play in the Dark 2011 FIAC, Paris ![]() A monologue, delivered in a blackout, describing a 'dark-off' between a writer and a Foley artist, each trying to evoke darkness more convincingly than the other. |
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A Potted History of Performace 2008 Collecting Live Art, Rochelle School, London ![]() A ludicrously performative lecture (involving puppetry and streaking) that wove together art history with the development of interdisciplinary projects at the Brown Mountain College of the Performing Arts. |
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Rehearsal of a Cross-Dressing Stepfather 2008 Lemoncello, London ![]() With the help of theatre director Zoe Pepper and actor Shaun French, I tried to recreate my stepfather from remembered snippets of movement and speech. |
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Whose Yves Klein is it Anyway? |
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Hayley Newman and Sally O'Reilly The Mermaid 2005 De La Warr Pavillion, Bexhill, and Cabaret Melancholique, The Mildmay Club, London ![]() Adolescent girls are told that if they can hold a pencil under their breast they are ready to wear a bra. The Mermaid found that she could hold not just a pencil, but a sink plunger, followed by a welcome mat, a laundry basket, a cycle helmet, a keyboard, a dishrack – with dishes... Performed as part of 'Variety' at De La Warr Pavillion. Photo by Sun Guojo |
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