Joy #5: A (sort of) retrospective exhibition

Lombardi—Kargl is pleased to announce the opening of Joy #5: A (sort of) retrospective exhibition Deirdre O’Mahony consisting of an interview, found objects, artworks’ traces, ephemera, sounds. The fifth and final chapter of 17(Joy) is curated by Sebastian Cichocki with works by Deirdre O’Mahony.

Joy #5: A (sort of) retrospective exhibition Deirdre O’Mahony consisting of an interview, found objects, artworks’ traces, ephemera, sounds

For the presentation of Joy #5: A (sort of) retrospective exhibition Deirdre O’Mahony consisting of an interview, found objects, artworks’ traces, ephemera, sounds in Vienna, Deirdre O’Mahony turns the space of 17(Joy) into a sparse but resonant field of traces. Deirdre O’Mahony’s work centers on the politics of landscape and the relationships between rural and urban areas, as well as rural sustainability and food security. Instead of completed artworks, visitors encounter fragments, an interview laid out like a quiet testimony, found objects, unfinished pieces, raw materials, vegetables, maps, correspondence, and drifting sounds. These »gleanings«, gathered together with curator Sebastian Cichocki, echo the historical practice of collecting what remains after the harvest: a method that here becomes a way of showing artistic labour through what accumulates, what survives, and what refuses closure.

The exhibition also serves as a visual footnote to the text »Land Art as Useful Art: Sebastian Cichocki in Conversation with Deirdre O’Mahony«, published concurrently by L’Internationale Online. Presented within the exhibition in the form of a newspaper, the conversation offers a broader context for the constellation of objects and sounds gathered in the space.

Joy #5 becomes a compact, vibrating constellation: part archive, part warning, part invitation to reflect on the relationships between land, community, and artistic practice. O’Mahony’s long-standing focus on rural sustainability meets Cichocki’s curatorial interest in ecological resistance, land art and conceptualism as a form of artistic reflection on the planetary system.

17(Joy) is supported by the Federal Ministry for Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport (BMWKMS), the ERSTE Foundation and Lombardi—Kargl.