Mel O'Callaghan: Live Echo

CASSANDRA BIRD is thrilled to announce the forthcoming solo exhibition, Live Echo by artist Mel O’Callaghan. Spanning across three levels of the gallery, this exhibition highlights O’Callaghan’s continuous exploration into resonance, planetary shifts, climate histories, and futures, prompting contemplation about our inherent drive to connect with one another and the mysterious forces of Earth.

Featuring a site-specific, large-scale wall painting titled My Heart Beneath the Earth (2024), this constellatory piece employs freshly crushed mineral and biological pigments, including rare earth minerals such as titanium, aqua regia, bronze, zeolite, ochre, and hematite. Aligned with O’Callaghan’s extensive research, My Heart Beneath the Earth (2024), delves into the molecular and mineral dimensions of our shared social and cellular origins. It encapsulates the improbable crucible moments in Earth’s history, from the split of the first cell 4.5 billion years ago to the explosion of a star, echoing a yearning for collective existence. Adjacent to this wall painting stands a captivating diptych glass painting showcasing the transfer of natural elements onto glass, resulting in a visual symphony of colour, texture, and mark-making left behind by a playful gesture.  

Upstairs, a new series of dynamic glass paintings define a visual reconfiguration of O’Callaghan’s practice. Created with alchemic substances of rare metals, minerals and pigments, each painting captures the essence of movement, music and words within the medium. Premiering in the downstairs space is O’Callaghan’s newest video work titled All the World Began with a Yes (2024). This work embodies the belief that the universe and its parts are alive, beginning in the very depths where cymatic resonance patterns visualise frequencies from earths core. Previously these vibrations beneath the cavity of the earth’s surface have emitted at a constant low frequency of 7.83 hertz, but in recent years there has been an increase to 8 hertz. Often referred to as the Earth’s heartbeat, this alteration of frequency reinforces the complex planetary changes that are currently afoot. This pulsing vibration is understood somatically as a resonance with all life, both on a microbial and an immensely geologic scale. Weaving together imagery from the astronomical observatory Jantar Mantar to Opium Goddesses with the power to heal, the work is both an antidote and act of ecofeminism.