John Patrick Egan

The pieces Egan creates allude to historical narrative, and gravitate, in conception and execution, towards the appropriation of certain elements to cultivate an aesthetic which, whilst employing sometimes disparate objects or imagery, best facilitates the manifestation of how he imagines the elements contained within the stories he has encountered, be they tales from 16th century folklore, comparatively modern family histories, or, indeed, anything in between. But, critically, the art requires the participation of the audience to attain validation. While he adheres to a particularly rigid and exacting template while producing the work, he tries to obscure the meaning which he invests in the pieces, so that they have a tendency to exhibit a certain ambiguity on account of the aforementioned disparate components. This, ideally (taking into account the propensity of the human psyche to establish a meaning for what its presented with), coerces the viewer into a dialogue with the work, thus imbuing it, on each viewing, with a new story, dependent on the proclivities of each respective observer. He, as the artist, provides the form, while the audience provides the various functionalities.

Central Saint Martins, London, U.K., M.A. Fine Art

Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin, IE, B.A. Fine Art