Contact
Gareth McConnell Studio / Sorika Ltd
Studio 15/17 Victor House
282 Richmond Rd
London
E8 3QS
Biography
McConnell was born in Northern Ireland / The North of Ireland, to the joyous pealing of sectarian bells. He became an addict – a fine lineage – and a marching member of the Grand Heroin Lodge of Ireland
McConnell repaid his debt to there-is-no-such-thing-as-society. He did this by the infinite care he took documenting addicts, recognising and honouring them for their outsider holiness – mystics walled up within the improbable acreages of huge social housing estates, with ceremonially punctured, pigmented skin, and practising ritualised loss of blood, and scarification, and death
A process of some kind of logic leads from the still, silent, white light of the Albert Bar series to McConnell’s rapt, nude psychedelia, and incandescent flower power works. It could be said that he depicts a continuity – the character armour of sectarianism, cultism, tribal sub-culture group identity, and their seeking of ideological absolutes. All with aspirations to some kind of great purity
Sky. Clouds. Refracted light. Visionary. Hyper contrast. Hyper frenzied crowds. Or solitude. Or isolation. Scarification. Obstacles and obstructions between the view and the heavenly light
Meaning of flowers:
Hibiscus: rare and delicate beauty
Violet (purple): first love
Foxglove: insecurity
Fern: Magic, enchantment
Poppy; eternal sleep, oblivion, imagination
‘ . . . I was more focused on making political work, whether it be about drug addiction or the situation in Northern Ireland. To take something like flowers and really try and make the subject matter your own is difficult.’ Frieze Week, 2022
Depictions of flowers in McConnell’s works: he commenced with dead or plastic flowers and worked backwards. Kitsch flowers printed on the wallpaper behind the undertaker’s light switch. Flowers depicted in the ticking of a sad and soiled mattress. A vintage tin of butobarbitone (a cheerful barbiturate derivative), in front of which are some flower petals/probably plastic/the light as recorded by McConnell has improbably patient gradations of tone. Dead flowers in poor Mickey Waldorf’s flat. RIP Mickey. Later flower photographs have brazen cyan and magenta. Flowers tend to resolutely not go anywhere, other than wilting in decay, but McConnell’s camera (or reprographic process) makes everything dance forever. Flash. Separation and disjunction. The retina bounces in the human skull, detaches itself, goes for a staggering walk on its little legs, grooving to early acid house, or whatever it is that McConnell is playing – ‘some kind of Andrew Weatherall-ish, post-punk, ravey, country and western, acid house, disco.’ Raw shadow. Slippage. De-registration. Obliteration. Screaming colour. Narcissistic colour. Vertical planes of colour. The engorged take-me-to-bed-and-fuck-me colours of sex. A bomb explosion of gloss paint planted in a crowd of innocent shoppers, many people not dead. Paramilitary identifiers. Haemorrhage colours. Hedonist colour. Psychedelic colours – the colours of the goddess, Psyche, well known to be somewhat mentally ill, who ended up in rehab, shagged a hideous and vile man, also a newcomer, got thrown out, but got clean in the end. Natural form, contours, leafage. McConnell’s night flowers – urban flowers are an epitome of the nocturnal city (The City of Dreadful Night), and its shrill LED, neon, or sodium street lighting, night moths, and dead poets
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He is founder and editor-in-chief of Sorika (est. 2013) an ongoing collaborative art project. His work has been featured and written about in internationally recognised art and news publications such as Aperture, Frieze, The Guardian / Observer and The New York Times and has been included in major survey art shows. He has collaborated with diverse brands such Chloe, Jo Malone and Sports Banger. He has organised events and spoken about his work at numerous academic and cultural institutions including Tate Modern, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and The National Portrait Gallery, London. His work is in collections both public and private including the British Council, Elton John and UBS.
Books
Details Of Sectarian Murals, 2023/24
Paramilitaries, 2023
The Horses, Sorika, 2023
The People Deserve Beauty, Sorika | Sports Banger, 2023
To The Beat Of The Drum, Sorika, 2022
The Dream Meadow, Sorika, 2020
Sex, Drugs & Magick, Sorika, 2015
Close Your Eyes, SPBH Editions, 2014
Gareth McConnell: Contemporary Photographers Monograph, Steidl, 2004
Back2Back, All Change, 2004
Wherever You Go, Lighthouse, 2002
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As publisher / editor / collaborator
Smiler, Mark Cawson & Neal Brown, Sorika, 2015
Looking For Looking For Love, Tom Wood, Sorika, 2014
A New Concise Reference Dictionary and Glossary of Usage Terms And Subjects In Contemporary Art, Neal Brown, Sorika, 2014
Horse Latitudes, Chris Wilson, Sorika, 2013
Selected Texts
Details of Sectarian Murals: Abstraction as Survival Strategy and Utopic Appeal, Sarah Allen, 2023
The People Deserve Beauty, Matt Williams, 2023
The Horses, Neal Brown, 2022
To The Beat Of The Drum, Sean O’Hagan, 2022
The Meaning Of Flowers, Neal Brown, 2022
Get Born, Go to school, Go to work, And die, Niall Griffiths, 2014
Where Strangers Take You By The Hand, Matthew Collins, 2014
Sex, Drugs & Magick, Sean O’Hagan, 2014
Acetate 2, Chris Wilson, 2011
Community Service, Tom Morton, 2005
Gareth McConnell, David Chandler, 2004
Gareth McConnell, Alison Green, 2004
It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding, Simon Pooley, 2004
On And Off Drugs, Neal Brown, 2004
Art As Irritant, Suzanne O’Shea, 2001
Carrickfergus, Susan McKay, 2001
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