Kira O’Reilly

Artist, independent researcher

Kuva: Jussi Virkkumaa

Artist, independent researcher – and sometimes educator – Kira O’Reilly is developing a concept of ‘menopausal batteries’ which plays with notions of ‘endochrine piracy’ that will be explored through working with materials and ideas of indeterminacy. Related to these, she also would like to learn how to make a microbial fuel cell. During her residency period, she plans to be very productive and, drawing on her field work from the summer months, she will also process some of the material on ticks and tick-borne pathogens. She is also working very slowly on a dance of mourning, a multimedia work that is emerging as an act of mourning – some of it is movement, some of it writings. She has also two book projects that she is completing whilst in Saari in the capacity of a co-editor for one, and a contributor for the other.

“The concept of thinking through doing is fundamental to my practice, and the idea that creative processes are nonlinear currents that can be cultivated and experienced in tangential ways” she describes her working methods.

“I move a lot – I practice psycho-physcial exercises that enable working with sensation nonconceptually, this has a pronounced effect on the artistic practice. These practices are generous in opening up perceptual faculties, how one experiences ones senses and in turn, ones environment. These are systems I have been taught within the methods of Vajrayana Buddhism. Writing has become increasingly fundamental to my overall practice, I write texts that I read to others but I also use writing as a method in processes of discovering and unfolding” she continues.

Kira O’Reilly is a Helsinki based artist who works with ephemeral forms to consider ideas of the body, it’s mutability and limits. This includes collaborations and articulations with other species, living materials, objects, and audience. Crossing disciplinary categories her practice arcs visual art,  art, science and technology, performance, live art, and dance. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout Europe, Australia, Asia, and North America where she has also taught widely.

Kira O’Reilly Untitled (Bodies) (2017) was co-edited by Harriet Curtis and Martin Hargreaves, and includes essays by Marina Abramović, Shannon Bell, and Tracey Warr