Damian o'sullivan

"The contemplation of things as they are without substitutions or imposture without error or confusion is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention." Francis Bacon, 1620

The choice for Damian to re-use existing objects has not been one of economy but one of beauty. The resulting economy is merely an added benefit. The things as they are, like Francis Bacon says, are the things that have surrounded us for centuries. They emerged through necessity. We have however, grown so accustomed to them that we sometimes forget about them and as a result we take them for granted. By looking at these things afresh and tweaking them slightly, Damian wants to shed new light on them With 'Oscar', the intervention that has occurred is minimal, yet the derived benefit is great. The wine bottle turned into vase or carafe by simply opening up the bottle's neck. As a vase, the angle of the bottleneck seems to embrace the flower's stem. As a carafe, the angled bottleneck acts like a funnel ensuring that not a drop gets wasted. 'Chalky' is really only a flowerpot with a lick of paint, but a lick of paint in the right place.and with the right paint! The blackboard paint has been applied to the rim of the pot in such a way that it can be written upon with chalk, thereby being able to identify newly sown seeds. 'Marcel' is more of a typological reinvention. The clothes hanger and the frame, two objects with shared geometry, have been combined into a new object. The recognition is instant yet estranging.