Enda O'Donoghue - Selected Recent Works (2014 - 2017)

Enda O’Donoghue Selected Recent Works (2014 - 2017)

Reset/Restart (2015) Oil on Canvas, 50 x 60 cm

Sisyphus (2016) Oil on Canvas, 140 x 190 cm

Icarus (Descending 1973) (2015) Oil on Canvas, 140 x 190 cm

Leviathan (Lower Body Negative Pressure) (2015) Oil on Canvas, 140 x 190 cm

Omnium (2015) Oil on Canvas, 140 x 190 cm

Incidental (2015) Oil on Canvas, 30 x 40 cm

Tunguska (2016) Oil on Canvas , 80 x 120 cm (x2), 80 x 100 cm, 80 x 70 cm, 80 x 60 cm, 80 x 50 cm & 80 x 40 cm ‘‘Suddenly the sky appeared like it was split in two, high above the forest, the whole northern sky appeared to be completely covered with blazing fire.”

On a morning in June 1908 there was a large explosion near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in a sparsely populated region of Eastern Siberia in Russia. The explosion, which has become known as the Tunguska Event, flattened an area of 2,000 km2 (770 sq mi) of forest. It is now generally considered to be the result of an asteroid airburst which entered the Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrated before hitting the ground. Over the years many other theories have been been suggested to explain the event, such as a collision with a black hole, an experiment by Nikola Tesla testing his “death-ray” or the explosion of a UFO. Expeditions were sent to the area in 1921 and then again in the 1950s and 60s and they photographed the still flattened trees of the forest. This series of paintings is based on a selection of these photographs.

Sightings (2015)

Oil & Acrylic on 13 Canvases

This series paintings are all based on found photographs of UFO sightings all taken in 1973 from various places around the world. According to many sources ‘73 was a bumper year for UFO sightings, it has been called “The Great UFO Wave”. Hundreds of sightings were reported throughout the United States and in many other countries across the globe. Some of these reports included tales of abductions, some with elaborate descriptions of humanoid like beings and some included photographs purporting to show the alien crafts or “flying saucers”.

In these paintings all traces of the mysterious crafts have been removed.

Solaris

(2015) Oil on Canvas , 120 x 240 cm

This painting is based on a scene from the 1972 movie Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky. The scene which contains no dialogue and alternates between black and white and colour lasts almost 5 minutes and shows a car driving along a highway filmed from the perspective of a passenger in the car. The scene was filmed in 1971 in Tokyo along the elevated overpasses and light-lined tunnels of the Inner Circular Route of the Shuto Expressway. At the time this network of roads must have had a very futuristic look particularly to a Russian audience and this scene offers a bridge between the scenes set on Earth and those set on the space station.The painting presents a location from this scene in one of the tunnels of the expressway, however it is based on a still from found footage from a dashboard camera of someone driving through these exact same tunnels but filmed in 2012.

Substitute - Moon / Horse / Cow (Automatic Return) (2014) Oil & Acrylic on Canvas, Triptych: 140 x 170 cm, 60 x 80 cm & 60 x 80 cm

San Francisco, November 20th 1973, The Who played the opening concert on their Quadrophenia US tour at a venue called the Cow Palace. Before the show Keith Moon, the drummer, ingested a concoction of horse tranquilizers and brandy. Allegedly he took to stage declaring “I can take it, I’m Keith fucking Moon.”

About 70 minutes into the show during the song “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, Moon began to waver and eventually slumped over his drum kit, and passed out. He was carried offstage given an injection of cortisone and cold shower and after about 30 minutes he returned to the stage. The concert continued but after just a few more minutes he passed out again. He was carried off again and this time didn’t return.

Guitarist Pete Townshend asked the crowd, “Can anybody play the drums? I mean somebody good!” A 19 year old called Scot Halpin was selected from the crowd, came up on stage, was given a shot of brandy for his nerves, took the seat behind the drums and finished out the rest of concert as the Who’s substitute drummer. Together they played two blues classics “Smokestack Lightning” and “Spoonful”, followed by a Who song “Naked Eye.” This triptych is made up of two small canvases, one presenting an image from a found photograph of a record player and the other a structural motif of a grid overlaid with layers of flat blocks of colour. The main canvas, the largest of the three, presents an image based on a video still culled from footage found online of this infamous Who concert in 1973 showing Scot Halpin on drums.

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