Eamon O'Kane: Plans For The Past and The Future

Eamon O'Kane, ‘Plans for The Past and The Future’, wood, furniture constructed from wood, charcoal drawing, printed text on A4 paper attached with pins, 2009.

Bookmarks

Other reviews by David Trigg

Tag search

Feedback

Inappropriate material?
Ideas? Technical issues?
» Feedback to a-n

REVIEW

Plan 9, Bristol
9 January – 15 February

Reviewed by: David Trigg »

Littering the floor of Plan 9 are the remnants of a huge sycamore tree that once stood in Eamon O'Kane's family garden. O'Kane grew up in County Donegal, Northern Ireland, in the historic Cavanacor House where, under the canopy of the sycamore tree, it is said that King James II dined during the Siege of Derry in 1689. This gesture of hospitality resulted in Cavanacor being spared while the surrounding area was laid to waste as James' army made its violent retreat from Derry.

For 'Plans For The Past and The Future', O'Kane has worked with a local carpenter to transform the sycamore tree, which was struck by lightning in 1991, into a seventeenth-century style table and chairs, similar to those used by James II. It's a delicious meditation on mutability, transmogrification and the notion of history as a contingent construct.

During the opening weekend, a selection of beautifully carved furniture components lay among the chunks of timber on the floor. A couple of weeks later they were assembled into an impressive collection of replica Jacobean furniture, which includes a dining table, stools and an arm chair fit for... well, a king.

Behind the furniture is a loosely sketched wall drawing of the sycamore, wittily made using charcoal, a medium not only derived from wood, but in this case, using charcoal made from the tree itself, demonstrating O'Kane's tremendous conceptual rigour.

Historiography (a term which describes the study of how knowledge of the past, recent or distant, is obtained and transmitted) is significant for O'Kane, and a subtle questioning of historical truth permeates the work on display. Take for instance Edward Lewis Crosby's History of Cavanacor House, a text-heavy screed plastered across one wall, which offers a fascinating account of the house's colourful past. Initially it appears authoritative enough but Crosby, it transpires, is actually a pseudonym for O'Kane, inevitably casting a shadow of doubt over the document's authenticity. Historical events such as James II's Cavanacor dinner date are accepted as stone-cold facts, but how can we really know with any certainty the true details of such accounts?

History and fiction collide unequivocally on the opposite wall, where eighty sheets of A4 paper contain a bewildering fictional narrative interspersed with historical references. Written by O'Kane, this alternative history novella takes the annals of Cavanacor as its point of departure, weaving a surreal and often nonsensical fairytale that comes as a frustratingly abstruse conclusion to an otherwise generous and compelling exhibition.

'Plans For The Past and The Future' forms the fifth part of O'Kane's international touring project 'Case Histories', which has seen the artist exhibit in Berlin, New York and London. O'Kane's historical investigations continue this summer as the tour concludes at ArtSway, New Forest, where the replica furniture will be used to stage a re-enactment of James II's meal.