Artist
Hugh O’Donnell

© Hugh O’Donnell, Invert Two, 2010. Photo Henry Chan.

1978 – 2022

Belfast, N. Ireland
https://flaxartstudios.org/flax-art-artists/Hugh-odonnell

Hugh O’Donnell’s has been creating installation, video and performance works since receiving his MFA in Fine Art from the University of Ulster. His performance practice is informed by drawing, found and made objects. Often of an auto-personal nature, O’Donnell’s work is material-based and conceptual, and is concerned with notions of gender and sexuality.  Hugh O’Donnell is based in Belfast, N. Ireland and his performance work has been exhibited in Ireland and internationally in Switzerland, Serbia, Romania and Quebec City. Currently he works with Bbeyond, a Belfast based performance organization established to preserve and promote performance art exchanges within Ireland/N. Ireland and abroad. This will be Hugh’s first performance in Toronto.

Performance
International Visiting Artists: N. Ireland

FADO Performance Art Centre urges you not to miss this evening of new performance works from two of N. Ireland’s new generation of performance artists, Hugh O’Donnell and Sinead O’Donnell, in an evening we are calling Spotlight on Belfast.

Violence is in Me by Sinéad O’Donnell
Invert Two by Hugh O’Donnell

The two O’Donnell siblings have often created performances together. However, in their premiere Toronto performance works, each artist inhabits a different physical—and emotive—space in the gallery. The work of both artists is exemplified by deeply personal image-making manifested in direct response to site, and a provocative use of (and relationship with) their chosen materials. For Sinéad, the materials are a stack of white dinner plates as tall as herself and a khaki green army helmet. For Hugh, these materials are salt, a paint tin full of milk, fresh liver frying in a pan, a single football shoe, a woman’s purse and a pair of gold earrings. Two words are painted on the wall “INVERT STOIC?” and his black t-shirt declares the word “PATH” on the back.

© Hugh O’Donnell, Invert Two, 2010. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance Yellow

This fragrance opens us to the question, has the show started? It's winter, the theatre is colder than the street and the room is filled with people and all their winter smells: wet faux leather, down, too much shampoo, and beer breath. The atmosphere is a trickster. Am I late, am I early?

Top Notes

yellow mandarin, mimosa

Middle Notes

honey, chamomile, salt

Base Notes

narcissus, guaiac wood, piss, beer