╨╧рб▒с>■  35■   2                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                ье┴@ Ё┐ч)jbjbЛюЛю 2сМсМч#      lввввввв····· ·┘ъ&&&&&&&&ЦШШШШШШ,├ уК─в&&&&&─|вв&&&|||&в&в&Ц|╢"╪"вввв&Ц||ЦввЦ .i?┐··B:ЦЦ┘┘Цm|mЦ|├хEamon OТKane in conversation with Roy Voss RV You produce large quantities of work very quickly and exhibit often. Could you say something about why you are so prolific? EOK I get asked that question quite a lot and my high production rate does have a relation to what I make. Richter has undoubtedly influenced me in his attitude of painting every day and producing large amounts of work and like him, one aspect of my process is that I work in series. This has been a tendency from very early on in my career. It isnТt an unusual thing for an artist to do and there are many precedents in art history. The reason for working in series is to be able to look comparatively at works and to also allow the viewer - once the works are out of the studio - to construct their own narratives or relationships between individual works. As the bodies of works developed some of the projects have actually questioned, through this over production, the validity of singular works and also the reason to make artwork at all and perhaps the systems in which one makes artwork, whether it is in the studio or through exhibiting. This is the reason why I have exhibited different bodies of work and also why I have resisted the temptation to show the same groups of work over and over again. The reason I am so prolific is that I want to make new works for every show I do, but in some ways it is about trying to break down the systems or structures that are forced upon artists. An artist becomes an author of a certain type of work. I am moving away from that way of working now because I feel that I have given myself the room to go back to employing different methodologies that I have used previously and also working in these different ways means that I have the freedom to jump between different media and different modes of presentation. It also enables a questioning of myself and allows the different projects to stimulate and interrogate one another. I like to question the power structures of the art market and am interested in how that might affect my art production in the future. RV I think for you making a lot of work is a way of gaining a presence in the world in some way and of course it ensures your work is seen as much as possible. Recently you have been making paintings from other peoples work. They are kinds of imitations. There are many artists who have emulated the work of others for various philosophical and conceptual purposes. Why have you? EOK In this particular show I am positioning the body of work, СMy Ideal CollectionТ alongside СThe Museum CollectionТ [paintings of museums]. IТm interested in painting other peoples artwork because I see it on several levels: first of all as becoming an incomplete (and perhaps impossible to complete) archive of my influences and a sort of patchwork quilt that has contributed to the construction of me as an artist. Nobody is without influence especially in this image heavy society and especially in the art world. Artists look to other artists, both contemporary and historical, to find a path forward for themselves and this series is showing all my cards in a way. The paintings are all uniformly displayed on the same size panels, which are like large postcards or small books, so they are referencing the postcards and other paraphernalia one buys in a museum after seeing a show. It is a way of taking the artwork away with you. Also, it is a way of referencing the books that these images are taken from and the fact that books and magazines have become, for better or worse, one of the ways visual art is disseminated. RV The paintings are presented a bit like pages from a book. You seem to be very interested in your work being available in reproduction - on websites and in catalogues - and you are quite happy that people see your work in that way. Your paintings often have the look of a reproduction and you have made little or no attempt to make the paintings that constitute СMy Ideal CollectionТ in the manner of the original. You donТt imitate the condition of the copied works; you paint them in your own style. Could you say why? EOK One reason is that by painting all the works - whether they are sculptures, photographs, installations, videos or paintings - to the same scale and in quite flat acrylic, is that they are all forced into the same parameters, which allows them to be scrutinized in a different way to looking at them in books or magazines. There are glitches both in the lack of detail, but also in the way they are painted. They are painted from differing viewpoints - some are details, some the complete work, some are installation shots, some are stills from a video, some are painted to the edge, some have a border. This all contributes to allowing the viewer to search their own personal archive and to question what they know about art and how they normally look at artworks. The other thing is that the whole project is quite nihilistic in that I am painting other peoples artworks but I am also painting museums, the work of architects, so that in some ways my artwork is not there anymore, or IТm not there anymore in anything other than the selection, translation and filtering of these images. In СMy Ideal CollectionТ the filtering is a way of getting closer to these artworks, not by appropriation but perhaps by gaining a type of ownership through painting or understanding them. RV Do you want to understand the artworks or own them? EOK I think itТs a mixture of both, but it is more to do with ownership of them - both the museums and the artworks. This is to do with power. It is also to do with desire. RV People collect all sorts of things Ц stamps, cars, paintings. It may be way of gaining some control over the world. You collect other peopleТs work by making a version of their work for yourself and then returning it back to the museum or the book. WouldnТt it be preferable to make work that is not like someone elseТs? EOK No. At this point in time I am very much interested in, on one level, interrogating myself about these artworks that have influenced me and on another level interrogating the structures of these artworks. In order to interrogate these structures you have to get into them first. I think that this will be one body of work with a certain shelf life and I will inevitably move on to other works RV IТd like to know a little more about your strategy and how you might judge the success or failure of your work. Fred Wilson for instance has a very clear political remit. He is a very different kind of artist to you, but could you compare your strategy to WilsonТs? EOK I think that Fred Wilson has a very clear-cut political strategy and thatТs one of the differences between my work and his. I think there are issues of race and gender in WilsonТs work, but they have no relevance to my work. RV I am comparing your attitude to WilsonТs because his is clear and yours is more difficult to identify. What position do you think your work is taking? It may be that you refute the idea of taking a position altogether? EOK I suppose the position for me might be best illustrated by an analogy. In some ways I see my position as being that of a disgruntled fan who after years of following a band or a movie star or whatever suddenly finds themselves questioning that individual or entity, and this harks back to a piece of work I did in 1999 which was a text piece in which I transcribed the names of hundreds of galleries and museums onto a dartboard and called it Сnot arranged in any order of preference but it would be nice to hit in and around the bullТs-eyeТ. That piece was very much about desire on my part and I see these paintings of museums as being connected to that because perhaps these paintings are a little bit like voodoo dolls. IТm not necessarily wanting to inflict damage on the museums by making paintings of them, but by in a way highlighting for myself and highlighting for the viewer the destination of the painting, because if I make very big painting the ideal destination for that painting is obviously a museum from my perspective as a young artist. So IТm starting the other way round, painting the destination of the artwork and pre-empting that desire. RV In the catalogues you produce and in published statements, you talk easily about what your work is СaboutТ, but you also repeatedly make claims for ambiguity in your work. EOK What often happens with statements or critical writing about an exhibition is that it prepares a very mediated interpretation. But by me disrupting that by throwing in a red herring here and there and making wild claims about what the work is doing, I get people to question that as well. RV So you are taking control of the way your work is seen to some extent by producing catalogues and some of the writing that goes inside it, designing the reproductions and so on. At the same time you are suggesting that it gives you the opportunity to be mischievous and mislead people, thereby allowing them their own interpretation. You want people to think about your work in their own terms, from their own experience? EOK ThatТs what I want people to do. ч)+,лм&'гд WXKL┘┌шщ╨ ╤ п!░!>&¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤шщ╨ ╤ п!░!>&?&ю&я&((┐)└)х)ц)ч)■>&?&ю&я&((┐)└)х)ц)ч)¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ ░╨/ ░р=!░"░#Ра$Ра%░ i4@ё 4NormalCJOJPJQJmH <A@Є б<Default Paragraph Fontч#2       аzЩ   аzЩ   аzЩ^ шч#▓ч)>&ч)ч) щ#OQ=F╘= > ? щ#:::  e eCMacintosh HD:Users:eamonoka:Desktop:Eamon O Kane in conversation wie e=Macintosh HD:Users:eamonoka:Desktop:texts:EOK_RV_conversation @А> > ╝q> > ╕'ч#` @GРTimes New Roman5РАSymbol3Р Arial3РTimes qИ╨h┤Щ╞┤Щ╞D@qе└┤┤А20▄$ы@  *Eamon O Kane in conversation with Roy Vosse ee e■  рЕЯЄ∙OhлС+'│┘0pИР─╨▄ш°  , 8 DPX`h'+Eamon O╒Kane in conversation with Roy Vossoamoe e eNormal╒e e2eMicrosoft Word 10.0@F├#@(┐ Ч░┼@(┐ Ч░┼D■  ╒═╒Ь.УЧ+,∙о0 hp|ДМФ Ьдм┤ ╝ є'ee @▄$$ +Eamon O╒Kane in conversation with Roy Voss Title ■    !■   #$%&'()■   +,-./01■   ¤   4■   ■   ■                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Root Entry         └F╦аЧ░┼6А1Table            WordDocument        2SummaryInformation(    "DocumentSummaryInformation8            *CompObj    XObjectPool            ╦аЧ░┼╦аЧ░┼            ■                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           ■      └FMicrosoft Word Document■   NB6WWord.Document.8