Dan O’Toole: Tree Spirits
Multi-disciplinary artist Dan O’Toole aka EARS presents an exhibition titled Tree Spirits, a culmination of artwork and musical sound that takes visitors into an imagined world. fluoro takes you on a journey through the exhibition preview.
After being involved in a show put on by Juddy Roller Creative Director Shaun Hossack in the Australian rural town of Benalla in 2015, O’Toole found a dense inspiration in the Australian bush.
The Juddy Roller space and a second home for O’Toole, was where he was based for a month as her created each of the pieces, which form somewhat of a strikingly different collection in comparison to his previous work. Allowing him to delve deep into his inspirations, Tree Spirits was created to take viewers through a series of imagined landscapes inspired by the Australian bush that O’Toole experienced through his trip to Benalla. However, being processed in his creative mind, the artworks form a more playful and abstract vision of the bush lands both in terms of shape and colour. Also featured in the exhibition is a range of floating portraits playfully twisted and touched up with graphic elements. Bold colours and geometric lines inspired by street art, but developed into ideas of symmetry and form, create compositions across the artwork.
To bring visitors deeper into his imagined world, O’Toole worked across sound, painting, video and photography, to create two soundwaves to accompany the exhibition. As eyes journey from one piece to another, the sounds created for the exhibition infiltrate the mind and stimulate the imagination. The result is a multi-sensory experience as the music takes you into the visual world displayed through the pieces in the space.
By blurring the boundaries between painting and photography, and combining them with musical sound, O’Toole exercises a rather playful experimental studio practice. An effect is created of journeying through a dream with, as described by O’Toole, floating characters and floating heads in the forest. That’s the feeling of Tree Spirits.
O’Toole’s musical addition comes from a long-lived attraction to and practice of music. Born into a musical family, O’Toole’s mother was a jazz singer, his father a blues guitarist, and brother played numerous instruments. O’Toole himself played the violin since he was six. Through his upbringing O’Toole experienced his mother’s jazz concerts in the house, and later played gigs in the house himself with Button Collective, among others. More recently, delving deeper into the musical realm O’Toole released an EP titled Floating Tokyo.
According to O’Toole, sound, visual sculpture and video compliment and inspire each other well. Photography influences video, and paintings inspire photography and video in terms of framing, composition and colour. Taking advantage of these effects, O’Toole’s work increasingly stretches the boundaries of the multiple disciplines.
Tree Spirits also sees O’Toole bring in a material that he never normally works with. Wood. A closer look at what seems to be art pieces hanging on the walls of the exhibition are in fact two wooden panels, which have been brought together to form uniquely designed record covers for the locally pressed vinyls that carry the sound waves created for the exhibition.
Tree Spirits will be on display from Friday 3 July until Saturday 11 July 2015 at Juddy Roller in Melbourne, Australia. An opening night celebration will be held on Friday 3 July, from 6pm (AEST).
Stay tuned to fluoro for a special interview with O’Toole and explore more of his musical and video talents here.
www.earstotheground.net
www.juddyroller.com.au
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