Stephen Sheehan
Born in 1986 in Birkenhead (UK)
Lives and works in Birkenhead (UK)
Stephen Sheehan graduated from Wirral Metropolitan College obtaining a first class honours degree in Fine Art in 2014. In 2016, he obtained an MA in Fine Art at John Moores University at Distinction Level. During his MA, Sheehan was nominated and selected as a Liverpool Biennial Associate Artist, a two-year programme that aims to support and develop the career of northern artists on an international level. Sheehan predominately works with film, performance and video. He has a particular interest in exploring human mortality and repetition.
Sheehan has submitted two videos for the 2017 Karachi Biennale. The first, Parrot Reflection, is a film he created during a one-month residency at ALN in Albany, New York, USA in 2016. Parrot Reflection depicts the moment when a character wearing a hat (played by Sheehan) discovers his reflection in a mirror that he finds in the snow. The film then proceeds to capture various characters as they find themselves in questioning conversations with their own physical reflections within an absurd world. Sheehan used Averill Park, a hamlet in rural New York, as a backdrop for the film while blending real life situations with filmed performances, allowing both fantasy and reality to merge. The work comments upon existence, morality and the self. The second video, titled Cambrian Explosion: I Arrived at the Circus at Two Minutes Past Eight, is a new film created specifically for KB17 during a one-month residency in Karachi with Vasl Artists’ Association. Making reference to the brief of Sight, Sheehan refers back to the Cambrian Explosion as a foundation for the film. The Cambrian Explosion was a period in time when sight first developed allowing life to flourish. Sheehan transforms and places the Cambrian Explosion into modern day society while exploring and presenting the absurd, beautiful, fragile and transient existence we find ourselves in. Stephen Sheehan will also be doing a performative work for the Karachi Biennale 2017.
