Summerhall

Antonio O'Connell: Virus

1 August – 26 September 2014

Antonio O'Connell is a Mexican installation artist and architect who creates extensions and intrusions into buildings using recycled materials and items from a building's past. O'Connell confronts concepts relating to the pragmatic and ontological purposes of space and form through architectural interventions. He is fascinated by the contrasting characteristics of architecture, exploring the dichotomy of function through the ephemerality of his structures. These structures reflect the reality of a contrasting world - where imagination is a luxury for some but a necessity for others. His work embodies the viral aspect of a decaying capitalist system, with an ironic view of construction traditions in both his country of origin - a developing country - and the iconic and spectacular cityscapes of the developed world.

O'Connell questions the role architecture and art play in closing the gap between developing and developed societies. This gap is a conceptual space that needs to be designed by all, not only architects or artists, in a world that is actually not united by technology and the immediate access to information, but by our quickly deteriorating environment.

For this Edinburgh Festival O'Connell will create a new major work at the front of Summerhall's building, incorporating some of the former Vet School's fixtures and fittings.

Mon-Sun 11am-9pm 

Outside August: Mon-Sun, 11am-6pm