Kira O’reilly untitled (synCOpe

photo: Manuel Vason

Kira O’reilly (uk)

untitled (synCOpe)

wOrld premiere a spill COmmissiOn

sHunt

Saturday 7 April 6pm and 9pm

tickets: £15 / £10 book now: Soho Theatre Box Office 0870 429 6883 “I like to think Kira’s work is... not beautiful but sublime.” Lois Keidan, National Review of Live Art Programme

On the back of a seaside postcard she had written to me: “when you fall into syncope, you never know in what shape you might return: with wolf’s paws, the tail of a serpent, a bark at your lips, a pelt or fur… One never knows.”

Wish you were here…

Kira O’Reilly employs performance, video, installation and, more recently, biomedical and biotechnical practices to consider the body as material, site and metaphor in which narrative threads of the personal, sexual, social and political knot and unknot in shifting permutations. The work is explicit, sometimes uncomfortable, and seeks to question rather than provide easy answers. By asking the audience to take a risk, a sense of intimacy is established, creating a direct and immediate dialogue of tender exchanges.

It could be thought of as a dance of sorts… I’ll do it once. And then once again. For each one of you. Together.

Kira O’Reilly is an Irish artist based in the UK. Since 1997 her work has been exhibited widely throughout Europe, Australia and, more recently, China, where she performed at the DaDao festival in Beijing. In 2004 she was an artist in residence at SymbioticA, the art science collaborative research lab at the University of Western Australia. She has been the recipient of awards from the Wellcome Trust, Arts Council of England and Artsadmin.