Conor Doyle
My work, large fabric sculptures, amplify the farcicality of every day, offering an absurd exploration of our post-truth, algorithm-engineered non-linear reality. Using absurdity and humour to ape social conventions offering an antidote to our contrived everyday seriousness… Creating a framework to question the authority and structures which govern (and ultimately antagonise) our daily existence.
Adopting a broken candy aesthetic, where bright cartoonish characters in compromising positions create an absurd version of everyday… Using and/or damaging materials, adding elements of irregularity and imperfection to distress the work creates a sense of agitation around something that looked fun and innocent at first glance… but on second glance it’s dark underbelly becomes apparent. Questioning both our understanding of the work and our trained assumptions we make everyday.
Seeking the Absurd
Daily Life is ridiculous… we blindly follow/or adhere to: rituals/structures/rules/ fads/labels/leaders/and powers
My work looks to amplify the farcicality of it all… offering an absurd exploration of our post-truth, algorithm-engineered nonlinear reality….
Using absurdity and humor to challenge the powers that be and ape social conventions, I am looking to offer an antidote to our contrived everyday seriousness…
Creating a framework to question the authority and structures which govern and antagonise our daily existence.
A Human Approach
I adopt a 3-layer production process. At the core sits a 3d patterned cardboard skeleton structure...
I then layer a wadding/stuffing musculoskelton, and finally the works skin is from made from a treated flannel, using a heavy over-exposed stitching technique.
For me, this process, represent the closest process sculpture can have to recreating living characters. Like skin, fabric wears and damages in your hand, ageing naturally as you work on it.
Wonky Detail
Is a familiar yet irregular, heavy and over-exposed, damaged candy neo-expressionist aesthetic.
Using and/or damaging materials, adding elements of irregularity and imperfection to distress the work creates a sense of agitation around something that looked fun and innocent at first glance…
Questioning both our understanding of the work and secondly our trained everyday assumptions.
Editing is an essential for the over-active creative mind, but when momentum allows I will explore two areas
1) In a world of AI infused sigma 6 reproductions human inaccuracy is last bastion of authenticity… but now we can use technology to replicate this authenticity with 3d printing
2) With a background in advertising, my concepts are never single media ideas but large universal transmedia narratives where each individual piece works together cumulatively to tell a much wider, immersive and involving story, an ad campaign even.
