Dr Paul O'Kane
Title
Senior Lecturer Critical Studies - Fine Art
College
Central Saint Martins
Email address
Tags
Researcher Research

Biography
Paul O’Kane is an artist, writer and lecturer. He studied BA Fine Art & Art History, then MA Visual Cultures, and completed a PhD in History at Goldsmiths, University of London (2009).O’Kane lecturers in Fine Art and Critical Studies at Central St Martins and Chelsea College of Art, and at SOAS, University of London, and makes and exhibits artworks concerned with a history of technologies and narrative. He writes for leading art journals, including Art Monthly and Third Text, and has published over 100 articles, reviews and catalogue essays. He is a founder member of the small artists’ book publishing imprint eeodo, with whom he published ‘Where Is That Light Now?’ (2014), and is currently writing and designing his third book, ‘Technologies of Romance’, collecting materials from his undergraduate seminar series at CSM. He is a Member of AICA (International Association of Art Critics) and blogs at ONLY YOU.
My main interest as an artist, writer and lecturer is in the mechanised image and the way in which art’s values and forms are influenced by a history of technologies.
My fine art practice has grown up through a fascination with photography, printmaking, video and film. My PhD (on Hesitation, supervised by Howard Caygill in the History Department at Goldsmiths), concerned time and the way in which we might start to write history, a theme which arose from a protracted period of isolated studio work (seven years) in which I used writing, drawing, sculpture and photography to try and represent temporal experiences. My current aims are to continue developing an idiosyncratic specialism as a creative researcher who makes objective explorations and contributions to an idea of living historically, while editing and presenting coherent statements emerging from my extensive archive of barely exploited works, spanning more than 30 years of work as an artist in London.
External Links
Research Outputs
Art/Design item
- O'Kane P. End Papers (2016)
- O'Kane P. Square One (2012)
Article
- O'Kane P. ‘Thought is Made in The Mouth’ Radical nonsense in pop, art, philosophy and art criticism (With reference to Scratchcard Lanyard by Dry Cleaning) (2022)
- O'Kane P. On Mask-Ocracy (2022)
- O'Kane P. Small worlds and short stories: play, pleasure and imagination deployed as a salve to isolated learning (2021)
- O'Kane P. Lectures in lockdown: trying to rescue the lecture as event (2021)
- O'Kane P. Six thousand masks for one imposter (2021)
- O'Kane P. The Carnival of Popularity Part II: Towards a ‘mask-ocracy’ (2020)
- O'Kane P. Technologies of Romance: looking for ‘object love’ in three works of video art (2019)
- O'Kane P. The Carnival of Popularity (2019)
- O'Kane P. Forever Young: Juvenilia, Amateurism, and the Popular Past (or ‘Transvaluing Values in the Age of the Archive’) (2019)
- O'Kane P. Forever Young: Juvenilia, Amateurism, and the Popular Past (or ‘Transvaluing Values in the Age of the Archive’) (2019)
- O'Kane P. Cathy Lomax: Painting the Scene of the Self (2018)
- O'Kane P. The Other Side of the Word : Translation as Migration in the Anthologised Writings of Lee Yil (2018)
- O'Kane P. Post-Perspectival Art and Politics in Post-Brexit Britain: (Towards a Holistic Relativism) (2018)
- O'Kane P. Painting Is Believing (2017)
- O'Kane P. Spolia As Speculation (2017)
- O'Kane P. 'Electronic Superhighway' curated by Omar Kholeif (2016)
- O'Kane P. Post-Perspectival Art and Politics in Post-Brexit Britain: (Towards a Holistic Relativism) (2016)
- O'Kane P. Lost (2015)
- O'Kane P. Downtime (2015)
- O'Kane P. The Rule of Exceptions (2015)
- O'Kane P. Curating the Legacy of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (2015)
- O'Kane P. Against Judgment (2014)
- O'Kane P. ‘The Blind’ (2014)
- O'Kane P. Symposium Review: 'Performing Photographs: Photography, Performance, and Affect' (2014)
- O'Kane P. Ruin Lust (2014)
- O'Kane P. New Romantic(ism) (2014)
- O'Kane P. All Clear (Transparency) (2013)
- O'Kane P. Life and Death (2013)
- O'Kane P. Paul O’Kane Interviews Travess Smalley (2013)
- O'Kane P. On Making Art (2012)
- O'Kane P. The Thing: Do you believe in things? (2012)
- O'Kane P. The State of the Arts in the Netherlands: Dutch Diary, Summer 2011 (2012)
- O'Kane P. Only a Game? Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy (2012)
- O'Kane P. Korea: Seoul Searching (2012)
- O'Kane P. Out Of This World (2012)
- O'Kane P. Polishing the Ruins (2011)
- O'Kane P. Phil Collins: Marxism Today (2011)
- O'Kane P. ‘Junk: Art and the Politics of Trash’ (2011)
- O'Kane P. The Incident at Modane: What Have We Learned? (2011)
- O'Kane P. John Gerrard, Oil Stick Work: Art on the Underground (2011)
- O'Kane P. Suki Chan: Sleep Walk, Sleep Talk (2010)
- O'Kane P. In And Out Of The City: A walk from Aldwych to Millennium Bridge via St Paul's, Tuesday 17th October 2006 (2010)
- O'Kane P. Paul O'Kane (2010)
- O'Kane P. Renzo Martens, Episode III (2009)
- O'Kane P. Thijs The Invisible (2009)
- O'Kane P. Four Thousand One Hundred & Eight Masks for One Imposter
- O'Kane P. One Or Two Ways To Square One
- O'Kane P. The Art of Righting
- O'Kane P. ADVENTURES IN IDEAS * Perceptions of writing and dissertations in a world-class 21st century art college
- O'Kane P. Arctic Circles
Book
- O'Kane P. History in Contemporary Art and Culture (2022)
- O'Kane P, Poiana F, Song B. Half Way To Cloud Mountain (2019)
- O'Kane P. Technologies of Romance - Part II (plus events) (2018)
- Lee Y, Chung Y-S, Park E-A, Song B, O'Kane P. Lee Yil: Dynamics of Expansion and Reduction Selected Writings on Korean Contemporary Art, 1970 – 1996 (2018)
- O'Kane P. Technologies of Romance - Part I (2017)
- Grassmuck V, O'Kane P, Qiu K. "I'm Alone, But Not Lonely" (2016)
- Song B, O'Kane P, Lambert B. Cash or Smash (2015)
- Priseman R, Cummings S, O'Kane P. Documentary Realism: Painting in the Digital Age (2015)
- O'Kane P. Where Is That Light Now? (2014)
- O'Kane P. The Beauty of Failure (2012)
- O'Kane P. The Time Before That (2010)
Book Section
- O'Kane P. The Carnival of Popularity: Wresting the Popular from Populism (2019)
- O'Kane P. Paul O’Kane, Renzo Martens, Episode III (2009); The Latest Laocoon: Reflections on Renzo Martens’ Episode III (2016) (2019)
- O'Kane P. Concrete Burns (2016)
- O'Kane P. About "About About": Art, Education, Grammar & Knowledge (2016)
- O'Kane P. Only You (2016)
- O'Kane P. Open Your Door (2015)
- O'Kane P. Duncan Pickstock Paintings 2014-2015 (2015)
- O'Kane P. Mountain Tasting: Dunhill & O'Brien's 'New Japanese Object' (2015)
- O'Kane P. Terrorism And The Left (2014)
- O'Kane P. Godfried Donkor (2014)
- O'Kane P. From Tall Story to Infinite Conversation: ‘The Head Fountain' (2014)
- O'Kane P. The Scene of the Self (2013)
- O'Kane P. The Politics of Performance - Nicola Ruben Montini (2013)
- O'Kane P. The Secret Carnival (2013)
- O'Kane P. Across The Bridge (2012)
- O'Kane P. One Or Two Ways To Square One (2012)
- O'Kane P, Chan S. Paul O'Kane (2012)
- O'Kane P. Four Characters With Implied Narrative (2011)
- O'Kane P. A Perfect Picture Of What To Do Next (2010)
- O'Kane P. To Have And To Care (2005)
- O'Kane P. Preface
- O'Kane P. Paul Eachus and The Colour of Chaos
Conference, Symposium or Workshop item
- O'Kane P. Did I See Cao Fei’s Exhibition At Serpentine Gallery? : Etiolated art and life in the time of the virus and the virtual. (2020)
- O'Kane P. The Carnival of Popularity (2019)
- O'Kane P. The popular past in the work of Elizabeth Price (with screening of a documentation of ‘K’) (2018)
- O'Kane P. Let Them Eat Photographs (2018)
- O'Kane P. Days of the Water Sun - remembering the studio (2018)
- O'Kane P. The Other Side of the Word : Translation and Migration in the Anthologised Writings of Lee Yil (2017)
- O'Kane P. Polishing The Ruins (2011)
Other
- O'Kane P. ‘Islands’ Richard Ducker and Gibson/Martelli (2015)
- O'Kane P. ‘Waiting, Narrative & Modernity: Nooshin Farhid & Lis Rhodes’ (2015)
- O'Kane P. ONLY YOU: 750 words a week on art and life in London (2014)
- O'Kane P. ‘An Unimaginative Response To Some Rather Dull Things, paintings by Sarah Poots’
Report
- O'Kane P. AICA International Congress Korea
Show/Exhibition
- O'Kane P. Mind Your Back/Looking Back (2016)
- O'Kane P. ‘RIGHT’ and ‘On Art & Labour: One Hour’s Worth of Thought’ (2015)
- O'Kane P. Cheolsan (2015)
- O'Kane P. ‘Downtime’ (2013)
- O'Kane P. Souvenir (2011)
Thesis
- O'Kane P. A Hesitation Of Things (2009)
Subjects
Fine art
Photography