Class of 2023 • Fashion

Shannon O’Connor


Shannon O’Connor
Institution
National College of Art and Design (NCAD)

Medium
Fashion

Graduation Year
Class of 2023

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I want to portray the way we think and feel how our inner emotions personify themselves and can influence the way we think and react, how these overwhelming feelings can take over our mind, body and control us, confliction follows, the way our imagination can overlap into reality and cloud your perception. Consumed by your inner thoughts. Feelings you can’t escape brought into fruition showing how these things like fear and doubt and things that scare us would personify themselves on our bodies and if they were brought into our reality rather than lurking in our heads.I'm interested in how we experience fear and intrusive thoughts consciously and subconsciously, reflecting on dreams and forms of monsters/ spirits/demons/creatures that lurk in the cracks of our world. How your identity can be lost in a pit of rumination on past trauma and fears. They will try to control you if you let them. Looking at how our brains' intrusive thoughts can persuade us and make us feel as if we are no longer in control of our own heads. My intrusive thoughts have become a manifestation of overlapping realities. Things that are seemingly not real that live in the walls of our minds conveying the feelings and thoughts that bury deep into our subconscious, things that lurk in the darkness, creatures in the mind personify themselves on the outside as they persuade feelings of fear to that of temptation. These invaders of the mind, lurk between your eyes, show themselves, and reveal themselves. Things in the dark hidden in plain sight? How do we fight against them and protect ourselves from our own head space? Fear, flight and fright drives us. The mind plays tricks on us, the “imaginary” monsters and in our heads can be more terrifying than reality. If not fight your demons, accept them, you cannot hide from yourself, your head or the thoughts in it. To ignore gives them time to grow; they will only get bigger and bigger until they explode out.In coming to terms with this lived reality for me, I am interested to embrace and confront these images, with their exaggerated features and the many different forms the face can take and morph into brought to life on the body.PROCESS Paper work and drawing/ college is an important starting points to lead into translation for form and scale. Working with many different dark coloured materials, plastics PVCs and leathers – that can convey skin, as well as not really breathable and restricting factors trying to convey the malice presence of the mind. Using padded sculpture forms and ‘tre-punto’ process, brings these “creatures” to life. Creating weighted constricted forms for the body that will try to convey the heaviness of our thoughts. Using stitch to emphasis the visceral, edgy, scratching, even as of weaponizing forms.I want to investigate making a series of wearable sculptures creating these “monsters, that can be worn like a mask or reference the creatures that live in our heads. Whether these pieces are to be part of performance or whether their menus can be conveyed by the freeze frame of the static sculpture piece is to be explored.
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