Island Talk 8
4th December 2023
Talk 1 - Tony O’Shea
A legendary figure in documentary photography, O’Shea is regarded as one of Ireland’s most important contemporary photographic artists. He combines the approach of a poetic European documentary tradition – an empathetic, if at times almost Beckettian sense of the absurd – with an anthropologist’s eye for social realities.
He presented two cycles of work: the first being Con P.O'Shea, a series of pictures about the final years of his father's life and eventual death after a series of strokes.
He also presented work from Anastenaria in Langadas, Greece in 1981. This work documents a commemorative event recalling the experience of expulsion and exile of a Greek community from the Black Sea area of present day Bulgaria.
Talk 2 - Basil Al Rawi
Basil Al Rawi is an Irish-Iraqi multidisciplinary artist working with photography, moving images, and digital simulation. His practice is concerned with the landscapes of memory, identity, politics, and mediated reality.
Basil spoke about work created during his recently completed practice-based PhD at Glasgow School of Art, specifically the creation of the "Iraq Photo Archive" and a VR work called "House of Memory". He also spoke about current and upcoming projects that have developed out of this.
Talk 3 - Adrian O’Carroll
Adrian O’Carroll is a photographer and art collector.
He gave an overview of his experience as a collector of art for over 30 years, with a lot of it in the medium of photography and in primary and secondary markets. This resulted in him engaging with gallerists, auction houses, museum directors, collectors and artists internationally. This year he became Chair of the Acquisitions and Exhibitions committee of the National Gallery and shared his insights into institutional collecting. Recently O’Carroll also started to sell his own work to collectors, so has completed the circle of perspective.