Tina O'Connell

This work expands the context and meaning of the work “In Dublin’, originally staged in 1999, during a residency at Irish Museum of Modern Art. In the new version, A Quantity of Easing (The Physics and Economics of Sculpture) the bitumen cast at the centre of the work, is reduced in scale to a cube, and set upon a block of Frieze magazines of the same proportions. The magazines, that chart the rise and rise of the art market through the 90’s and early part of this century, link through the material reference to bitumen, the wealth of the oil industry, of which bitumen is a waste product. As one destructs to conceal the other, the work is a commentary on wealth and its relation to the concealed markets of art and collectors. 

Set in context of John Lathams former home, Flat Time House, I was interest in exploring whether the project could use John Lathams own techniques of destruction of books (by oil) as an inherent critique of the art market’s commidifaction processes. As a nod to earlier work, in which an impromptu bet started, a further twist is added by a sweepstake that allows viewers to place their own wager on the speed of the works destruction.

Project Elements:
Plinth with 30cm cube of custom made bitumen. Copies of frieze magazine cut and re-ordered to create a base. Mounted on custom made plinth to allow clean unbroken spill over.

Tina O’Connell, A Quantity of Easing (The Physics and Economics of Sculpture) from Tina O’Connell on Vimeo.

The start of the Wager at Flat Time House in london. With Curator Elisa Kay.

Polaroids of the event were taken and displayed for visitors arriving after the main event.

Different stages of the work in progress.

Detail after one week.

The heat in ‘The Mind’, the name given by John Latham to this room in the front of his house, was fierce.

John Hill, at time, Director of Mental Furniture at Flat Time House, inspects the progress of the work.