Love[f]Art #04 | Mel O'Callaghan

Hosted by Amanda Love, the LoveArt podcast brings listeners into direct conversation with contemporary artists, extending the work of the independent art advisory, LoveArt, based in Sydney, New York and Athens.

The series draws from Love[f]Art, LoveArt’s ongoing program of intimate, in-conversation recordings with artists, originally conceived in 2020. Filmed in the most unlikely of settings—the guest powder room at the Love residence—the project strips things back to a one-to-one exchange, focusing on ideas, process and the conditions that shape contemporary practice.

This episode features Mel O'Callaghan's Sea Mount (2020);  filmed in the Eastern Pacific where she undertook a three-week expedition on the Research Vessel Atlantis - the same trip from which her recent major exhibition Centre of the Centre derives. From the trusty submersible HOV Alvin, Sea Mount captures a descent through the sea’s five layers - zones that extend from the surface to the most extreme of largely unexplored depths – in an epic journey of genesis and regeneration.

Recorded in December 2020, at the time of the work’s installation, the conversation offers a direct insight into the thinking behind the piece, and the broader concerns that underpin her practice.

Mel O'Callaghan is represented by Galerie Allen, Paris; Kronenberg Mais Wright, Sydney; and Galeria Belo Galsterer, Lisbon.

Additional information, including the video version of this podcast, is available here.