past projects
2009-2017
Woven Earth Time Body.
a dreamy video and performance lecture for The World is Almost 6000 Years Old
at The Collection and Usher Gallery Lincoln 2013
curated by Tom Morton
This film explores the alternative or imagined histories of the earth and the body. Made from found footage and the artists own sound scapes. Originally made for the exhibition The World Is Almost 6000 Years Old, The Collection and Usher Gallery, Lincoln in 2013, this work has been revisited by the artist as a starting point for new work in 2020.
Worlds Combine #1
video and site specific billboard installation with a film by Stars Combine
After The Future : EVA International 2012 curated by Annie Fletcher
Worlds Combine #1
one-jump/gifclips
This work explores the affective dynamics between subjects and objects of attraction, examining the performative, the mimetic, the amateur, the viral and the regional. Worlds Combine #1 presents models of individual and collective response to such objects, be they subcultures, visions of the future or local histories. The works concern lies within the slippage between the private relationship between subject and object and the externalisation of that relationship through various forms of creative production and mimesis.
Through reappropriation, repetition and reference Worlds Combine presents works that not only consider this relationship but also, by virtue of their content, often concern questions relative to our understanding of community, social geography, temporality and ownership. This work nurtures coherent theoretical research alongside a playful and experimental aesthetic quality.
Worlds Combine 1# employs a multifaceted approach to its subject, presenting a two channel video installation, billboard poster and large vinyl print, all of which reference a Sierra Leonean musical comedy In Bulgar that addresses the day-to-day life of people during and after the civil war in Sierra Leone (1991–2002). Due to the oppression of the ‘Rebels’ during the civil war, bulgar was the only readily available staple food for most Sierra Leoneans at that time.
This film takes In Bulgar,an existing film by Stars Combine, as a text and presents it in its original form and then subjects it to analysis through various forms of repetition and augmentation; underscoring language and image with subtitles, animated illustration and repetition. Through still images and editing, I direct the viewer’s attention towards the aspects of the film I deem as most relevant: survival, communal effort, humour and creative expression.
Vector/Attractor
a solo presentation of textiles, sculpture and film at The Goethe Institut Dublin 2013
screenings and collaborations from Emad Radder and Stars Combine
curated by Georgina Jackson
Vector/Attractor
gathers comedy sketches, sculptural objects, and monumental architectural forms exploring multifaceted spheres of influence. Looking beyond the post-colonial, and an exploration of what constitutes difference, there is an assertion and an exploration of attractive forces which create sites for gathering and modes of commonality rather than division.
Vector/Attractor layers objects of attraction and their associations from multiple locations which intersect, are reconfigured and transformed through diverse narratives. A large-scale tower is transplanted into the gallery space as a site for gathering, a sculptural form or a set for an unscripted event. An oversized plastic diamond becomes an object of preciousness excerpted from a film by Sierra Leonean comedy and performance group Stars Combine while a sculptural object is transported into the script. Rekab explores, reconfigures and rethinks locations and positions of aggregation, attraction and spheres of influence alluding to the past while projecting into a future that has not yet come. This exhibition is the second part in an ongoing collaboration with Sierra Leonean comedy and performance group Stars Combine who combine humour with exaggerated action and costume to engage with recent conflicts and pertinent social issues.
A MacGuffin And Some Other Things
an exhibition of video, performance and sculpture at Project Arts Centre Dublin 2012
curated by Vaari Claffey
A MacGuffin and Some Other Things
The original script for the exhibition A MacGuffin and Some Other Things focused on the object as it occurs within the narrative of a play or film. The exhibition has gone somewhat off-script. Things slowly took over. The works on display vary between objects that ‘perform’ or imply a script, video works that contain a script, and performative works that serve to enact or disrupt a script, examining the effect that sculptural objects have on meaning.There is a moment in Samuel Beckett’s ‘Film’ where the protagonist, ‘O.’ (for Object) played by Buster Keaton, draws the curtains in his apartment. They have been used so often as a means to block out the world that they have become nothing more than dangling rags, yet O. draws them and is reassured.In this performance and video work I re-perform a series of demonstration videos focused on the ‘alignment of body, mind and energy as a technique for optimising one’s overall condition’, which are disrupted by the inclusion of a number of sculptural objects.The exhibition also includes a major structural intervention in the gallery space: a huge piece of fabric which splits the gallery in two horizontally, creating two viewing levels and forcing a divide between films or performed narrative works, and sculptural objects. This partition is both pinned down and interrupted by a central weight, an object around which the show orbits, but whose intrinsic properties are unknown and, at first, seemingly irrelevant.
An Impossible Tribute.
a film/performnce for This Is Going To Take More Than One Night
curated by Vaari Claffey
An Impossible Tribute is a short film/performance based on the song ‘Cousin Mosquito’ by Liberian congress woman and musician Malinda Jackson Parker, ‘Cousin Mosquito’ is based on a Liberian Folk song that alludes to the peril of Malaria sung over a rendition of Rachmaninoff’s prelude in C-sharp minor. In this work, I attempted to perform a tribute to this song and its original performer through an impossible and strained mimicry.There is a sense of awkward isolation in this work of absurd yet seductive homage, which places ideas of mimesis, and the amateur in uncomfortable proximity to the smooth aesthetics of its production, which seems to over compensate for something. An Impossible Tribute was commissioned as part of an exhibition on film curated by Vaari Claffey and directed by Neasa Hardiman. This film based exhibition was entitled This Is Going To Take More Than One Night. This film was screened at The Model, Sligo in March, The IFI Dublin in April 2012, and The Old Police Station, London in June 2013.
Public Art Commissions
2011-2017
Breaking Emmet's Block
a public art commission for South Dublin County Council for the Grange Road Plaza
The Pearse Museum Dublin 2017
This Sculpture speaks to the heroism, brilliance and imagination that underpin the history of St. Enda's park. Taking the artefact of Robert Emmet's Block (on display in the museum) as its starting point the sculpture base is modelled on the asymmetrical shape of both curved and angular surfaces which make up this curious artefact. Robert Emmets Block is of interest to me as it forms a joint site of both Emmet's untimely execution and the historic signature table for the first Irish government bonds symbolising how we built upon revolutionary sacrifice to construct a new state for the Irish people. Fantastical, explosive and radiant Breaking Emmets Block is a sculpture that reflects on the impact of change and the emergence of a new world from the old. The sculpture is approximately three meters in height and cast from coloured concrete around a steel armature. The lighting bolts jut upwards and outwards yet remain rooted deep inside in the block. Both striking outwards or being struck the future emanates from the past while performing a generative act of destruction upon it.Breaking Emmet's Block acts as a contemporary continuation of both Pearse's commemoration of heroes and the playful twist his pageantry brought to the romantic idealism that was so central to the culture of St. Enda's. Like a maquette from a school room, the design and colour scheme of the work reflect the importance of St. Enda's as a place focused on education and the stimulation of the childhood imagination - its dolmen-like form mimicking the follies found throughout the park grounds. This sculpture brings a playful twist to Pearse's interpretation of Irish mythology, embodying the effusion of imagination and heroism he inspired. Intrinsically linked to both Emmet's sacrifice and the foundation of the Irish state this work seeks both refection on the past and extension into the unknown. Its materials bring a futuristic twist to a brutalist aesthetic inspired by the Spomenik found across multiple commemorative sites in the former Yugoslavia, drawing through lines between the socialist ideals of the Irish free state and their remnants in the contemporary Irish psyche.
Units of Potential
a private commission for the Cathal Ryan Trust 2011
Lir Academy For Dramatic Arts Dublin
This Sculpture speaks to the curious relationship between artistic brilliance and the academy, understanding The LIR Academy as a place not just for the development of skills but for the germination of talent. Rekab sees The LIR as a training ground for brilliance, a brilliance that grows in excess of the institution yet remains supported by it. Each sphere suggests an egg, a unit of pure potential, like a kind of luminous creative excrescence that is supported by the building yet pushes the boundaries of its designated space, as it multiplies and climbs to the limit of the buildings parameters, stretching over the buildings edge, reaching upwards towards the sky. As an artwork it experiments with the intensity, aspiration and the sometimes awkward, yet sublime, appendage of creative expression.