Connolly’s practice encompasses process based sculptural works, objects and performative events both inside and outside the gallery space. In his most recent series of works the Belfast based artist distills across varying scales the causes and affects of risk and uncertainty that occur at the fragile interface of humans and nature.
As the present exhibition sets out to expose, this fragility and uncertainty is nowhere more disturbingly encountered than in the process of ‘geological fracturing’ for the purpose of extracting gas. Exhibition works such as 'Fence Diagram', 'Fractured Landscape', ‘Complex Studio Landscapes’ and ‘Fracture’ dramatize how pressurized liquid pollutants might travel, and pose a threat, to rock strata, water aquifers and surface life-forms exposed to its unpredictable affects. Both a meditation on the artist’s own experience of fracking, which threatened his home county of North Antrim, and a timely warning against unbridled quasi-scientific confidence in its safety - Connolly’s exhibition re-enacts and embodies the unpredictability and risk immanent to the fracking process.
The project is informed by independent scientific studies of Fracking sourced at Duke, Stanford and Durham Universities and links up with local communities affected by the plans for fracking in the North West Carboniferous Basin of Leitrim, Fermanagh and Cavan including the local ‘LOVE LEITRIM’ campaigners. In addition, Connolly has granted part of the gallery space to the Young Friends of the Earth campaigners from Dublin who, along with the artist and Love Leitrim, are trying to raise awareness about the potential risks of chemical fracking and its incompatibility with the community of life forms it comes in to contact with. This project included elements from the ‘So What Is Fracking Exhibition’ a mobile research exhibition, curated by Sean O’Reilly at LSC, that involves the participation of pro and anti-fracking arguments as it travels from site to site.
Exhibition curated by Séan O'Reilly.
Connolly has created Performance Art Works across the world from Europe, Canada, Mexico, to China, as well as exhibitions across Europe. He has remained committed to the instigation of Artist Led Projects and the establishment of International Artists Networks via such International projects as: Available Resources, Derry, 1991, Irish Days II, Poland, 1994, Exchange Resources, Belfast 1995, In Place of Passing – via Bbeyond 2005. Connolly established The Glass Box Performance Art Project 2011 & 2012, leading to The Belfast International Festival of Performance Art 2013 - 2015 at University of Ulster, Belfast. Some of these events were exchanges, 'residential' or 'symposia' in format, and were designed to engender communication between a range of divergent artists as well as new audiences. Connolly is a founding member and former chair of Bbeyond, which has initiated a wide range of events both nationally and internationally, and was board member of organizations such as the Sculptors Society of Ireland, The Association of Artists Ireland, Circa Art Magazine, The Project Art Centre and FlaxArt Studios. He was selected as the first Northern Ireland Artist Representative for the Visual Artists Ireland between 2006-08; has acted as an Artistic Advisor for the London/Derry Development Office 1995 -98 and established Moyle Art for Public Places in 2001. He has also created a range of public artworks throughout Ireland since 1990.
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