Kira O'Reilly
Encyclopedia
Kira O'Reilly is a performance artist based in the UK. She graduated from Cardiff
Cardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
School of Art in 1998, and has participated in a number of performance art festivals throughout the UK and Europe, including at the Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University 1998, the National Review of Live Art, in Glasgow (1998, 2001, 2003), at Arnolfini
Arnolfini
The Arnolfini is an arts centre and gallery in Bristol, England. It has a programme of contemporary art exhibitions, live art, music and dance events, poetry and book readings, talks, lectures and cinema. There is also a specialist art bookshop and a café bar. Educational activities are undertaken...
in Bristol, at Home in London and at several European festivals including Break 21 Festival, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
, 2002 and ANTI - Contemporary Art Festival
ANTI - Contemporary Art Festival
ANTI - Contemporary Art Festival is a yearly international live-art festival held in Kuopio, Finland, which uses modern cityscapes as a stage for its contemporary art performances and installations. The event has garnered interest mainly because of its original stagings and mix of local and...
2003, Kuopio
Kuopio
Kuopio is a city and a municipality located in the region of Northern Savonia, Finland. A population of makes it the ninth biggest city in the country. The city has a total area of , of which is water and half forest...
, Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
. She performed in China at the Dadao performance art festival, Beijing, organised by Shu Yang
Shu Yang
Shu Yang, born 1969, China, A Chinese painter, performance artist, photographer and curator. After studying at Xian Academy of Fine Art, he moved to Beijing where, in collaboration with Chinese artist Zhu Ming and Chen Jin, he set up the first performance art festival in China known as the Open Art...
2006.
Between 2003 and 2004, O'Reilly undertook a residency with SymbioticA
Symbiotica
' is an artistic laboratory dedicated to the research, learning and critique of life sciences. Located within the at The University of Western Australia, it is the first research laboratory of its kind, in that it enables artists to engage in wet biology practices in a biological science...
, a bio-art project based in the department of Human Anatomy, University of Western Australia
University of Western Australia
The University of Western Australia was established by an Act of the Western Australian Parliament in February 1911, and began teaching students for the first time in 1913. It is the oldest university in the state of Western Australia and the only university in the state to be a member of the...
. She has received several major commissions and in 2001 was invited to produce work for Span2 international performance art residency in London. Her work often involves the cutting of her skin, and recent pieces have also involved animals, including leeches and pigs. She was the focus of a major controversy in the British press, angering British animal rights activists by performing a durational piece with a dead pig, at the Newlyn Art Gallery
Newlyn Art Gallery
Newlyn Art Gallery is a contemporary art gallery located in Newlyn, Cornwall, UK. Opened in 1895, designed by James Hicks of Redruth and financed by John Passmore Edwards the gallery was conceived as a home and exhibition venue for the Newlyn School of Art the works of which are now largely located...
in Penzance, southwest England.
Selected works
- inthewrongplaceness (2005–2009)
- Falling Asleep with a Pig (2009)
- Unitled (for you beloved) (2008)
- Untitled (Syncope) (2007)
Further reading
- Vason, M ‘Encounters. Performance, Collaboration, Photography' Bristol: Arnolfini, 2007
- Bodiescapes, Performance Research 8.2, London:Routledge (2003)
- The Degenerate Art Book, Arnolfini Live, (2001)
- Human Futures, edited by Andy Miah, FACT & Liverpool University Press 2009
- Performance, the Millennium and the Marking of Time,(Black Dog Publishing:2000