Orla Kenny - Graduate

About me

My name is Orla and I have just completed a degree in Fine Art at CSM. My practice explores ideas surrounding irony, sincerity, and transformation, primarily through video and performance. My practice has a low fi, DIY aesthetic and ethos. I am inspired by fancy dress, Mark Fisher, Folk-Horror films, cowboys, and 'cursed images'. There is a refusal to take myself completely seriously, I create to express myself but obfuscate, to an extent the work always devolves into farce. The simultaneous presence of irony and sincerity in my work and the subsequent tension between them is informed by artists who employ Post-Irony such as Alex Cameron and Jon Rafman. Whilst primarily shooting my own footage, found text from interviews with family members, poetry and songs that have inspired me often narrate my videos. Making costumes and props often out of cardboard, paint, and tape, is integral to the work I do. I think the partial ‘failure’ of my costumes to fully transform their wearer into the desired character explores the failure to achieve self-actuality or contentment. I think this represents my general confusion about life and living which is present in the sometimes elusive, inconclusive narratives in my work and manifested in the characters which inhabit my films.

Skills

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