JOHNODONNELLprojects
Triangle Eyes
2023
Clio Art Fair
New York, NY
Envy Emvy
2022
Edge Zones
Miami, FL
PG Allin
2022
Flower Box Projects
Miami, FL
Oily Metal (Oily Bois Perfromance)
2021
Emo Fest
Chicago, IL
This performance was shared on Twitch.
A virtual house show benefiting "Girls Rock!" An organization focused on building a socially just community with girls, transgender youth and gender expansive youth.
Emo Fest was presented by Emo Records in Chicago, IL.
Black Metal Pac Man
2020
The Living Room
New Haven, CT
This performance was shared on Instagram Live.
A Reading of Dollar Store Poems
2019
Blue House Arts Gallery
Dayton, OH
I made a book of dollar store receipts I have been saving since 2008. I read them in a cadence similar to a stereotypical "slam poetry" delivery. This performance took place during the opening of "Money Palace," an exhibition about dollar stores and artists who use materials from dollar stores. Kim Deal from the Pixies was in attendance and said "It was really cool and you should perform this on stage."
Winner Winner Chicken Sinner
2019
Flowerbox Projects
Miami, FL
In this performance the artist is costumed as a hotdog with a chicken head. He wore handler gloves to peal open a rotisserie chicken while he narrating the action describing parallels of the art world and factory farming. This happens against the backdrop of a hotdog stand made from a fine art crate used to transport art.
photography by: Phil Lique
Swamp of Love
2019
New Bedford Art Museum
New Bedford, MA
This performance took place on Valentines Day and is about an individual’s search for love within a toxic environment. This performance draws visual inspiration from the movies Shriek, Ghostbusters and the song “Swamp of Love” by the band King Tuff.
photography by:
Post Brunch: Part Two
2018
Glass Box Gallery
Seattle, WA
Post Brunch: Arriving Monday
2018
Glass Box Gallery
Seattle, WA
Neo-American Pre-Teen Day-Dream
2017
City Wise Open Studios, Artspace
New Haven, CT
Language is Magic
(filmed in front of a studio audience)
2018
The Wassaic Project
Wassaic, NY
This performance was designed to mock the structure of a children’s television show and parody the language of media aimed at children. Acting as host I presented a series of props based on puns, clichés and fart jokes. The quality of the tricks quickly diminished and the audience got bored. At which point, I dumped out 60 large cardboard building blocks for the audience to play with. This action redeemed the failed act and reengaged the audience. This piece is about encouraging fun and levity within a gallery space by facilitating creative play for both children and their parents.
photography by:
Blue Blooded American
2017
Artspace
New Haven, CT
Blue Blooded American is a performance that follows a three-act structure and multiple costume changes. This performance tells a story of a distracted youth destined to entertain the masses. The attention received destroys him and he is consumed by wealth that renders him swollen and blue. It engages ideas of entertainment, distraction, apathy and self-destruction. Musician Bill Beckett provided the soundtrack.
photography by:
All Seeing Sage
2017
Artspace
New Haven, CT
Performance directed by John O'Donnell. Performed by Saravah Swati. All Seeing Sage moved through the crowd and encouraged individuals to look in to the empty box with a mirror inside, surprising them with a reflection: their own face.
photography by:
Ghost of a Wall
2017
Hans Newspace Gallery
Manchester, CT
This performance is about moving beyond perceived limitations and assumptions. The performer's costume transforms from a suffering ghost to corpulent cloud. The performer transforms an opaque and oppressive structure in to an open optimistic space populated with golden ionic columns, referencing memories of idealized democracies.
photography by:
Red Blooded American
2017
John Slade Ely House
Contemporary Art Center
New Haven, CT
This performance is about representations of arrogant patriotism in America. The sound track provided by musician Bill Beckett. This performance follows a three act structure. Act One (ambient sound): Performer costumed as a teenager enters, transfixed by hand held device, blind to the audience. Act Two (Jimi Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner): Teenage costume removed, performer adorns himself with red and white ribbons, performs a series of actions sharing U.S.A. paraphernalia with the audience, specifically the children present. Act Three (Black Sabbath’s Paranoid): Performer adorns himself with a costume inspired by Mayan imagery and the Transformers franchise. This act ends with the costume being sacrificed to the audience. The audience (children) destroy the costume.
photography by:
Dude Descending Staircase
2016
John Slade Ely House
Contemporary Art Center
New Haven, CT
Dude Descending Staircase is performance about contemporary distractions and political propaganda.
The first act of the performance is a brightly colored human/mutation walks down a staircase playing on a phone that emits loud digital sounds (bleepss, boops, beeps). The second and last act is the same performer (without a mutant costume) sings a song. "Captain America never gets scared or embarrassed / now / because / all his pride / lies in his country."
Rising Crust
2016
No Pop Gallery
New Haven, CT
Rising Crust is a performance bridging ideas of Hollow Earth Theory and store brand frozen pizzas. The performance will consist of a series of actions that reference parodies of Mayan ritual and originals song about frozen pizza preparation and packaging written and performed by John O'Donnell.
Temple of Pizza
2016
Artpace Windham
Willimantic, CT
Temple of Pizza is a performance that synthesizes moments of excitement from my childhood. The memory of watching Indian Jones and The Temple of Doom while eating a frozen pizza cooked in the oven is my earliest "pizza and movie" memory. The performance consisted of a series of rituals and songs related to joy and excitement from my youth.
Pizza Hulk
2015
City Wide Open Studios,
New Haven, CT
A performance inside of my installation Kitchen Island. Pizza Hulk begins with me singing an endearing song to a frozen pizza. The box specifically says it is a “Pizza for one.” I serenade the cooking pizza and when it is finished baking. I attempt to eat it with a mask and gloves. The pizza is demolished and the masculine exaggeration I embody is left hungry and messy. An inflated grasshopper emerges for a box of tissues decorated as a lime wedge.
Photography Chris Randall
Kitchen Island
2015
City Wide Open Studios,
New Haven, CT
A performance inside of my installation Kitchen Island. For this performance I have a phone conversation on a plush toy banana with a voice modulator built into it, altering my voice. While on the “phone” I prepare a “meal” of a variety of non-edible items selected based on color. This performance is about the ambiguity of conversation and transforming a personal space into a public space for the sake of entertaining guests.
Photography Sean Patrick Stevens
Cereal Cave
2015
Glass Box Gallery
Seattle, WA
More elements of ritual, procession and inventible degradation of the performer are articulated in this piece. This performance addresses concepts of surface and spectacle intended to examine the intersection of art, audience and amusement.
Again, I used many symbols present in David Lynch’s film Eraserhead from 1977, to locate an intersection between poetry, horror and resolution.
An original score written and performed by Seattle based musicians Peter C Murray and Boyd Pro accompanied the performance.
Photography by Mario Quintana
Balanced Breakfast
2014
The Blue House Gallery
Dayton, OH
This performance addresses concepts of surface and spectacle intended to examine the intersection of art, audience and amusement. Balanced Breakfast was a performance done conjunction with my exhibition Cerreality at The Blue House Arts Gallery in Dayton, OH. I attached a bowl to my head and attempted to eat cereal out of it without spilling. I inevitably fail. Motivated by ideas present in past performances, nostalgia, failure and the degradation of the performer.
Kitchen After Dark
2014
New Britain Museum of American Art
New Britain, CT
This performance took place during a Halloween party at the New Britain Museum of American Art. Like most of my performances this was loose three-act narrative with costume changes. Kitchen After Dark was about objects found in a kitchen and reinterpreted through action and song. This performance revolved around the idea of finding a piece of junk food on the ground and discovering a candle inside of a carrot.
An original score written and performed by New Haven based musician Bill Becket accompanied the performance.
Photography by Phillip Fortune
Slime
2012
Broad Street Gallery
Trinity College
Hartford, CT
curated by Beena Azeem
A performance equally inspired by Austrian performance artist Hermann Nitsch, Nickelodeon and MTV television programs from the 1980’s. Elements of ritual, procession and inventible degradation of the performer are articulated in this piece.
For this performance I wrote and performed a song: “Never wanted to get slime on me/oh no, oh no!” Revealing to the audience the performer's desire to avoid slime. Mid-way through the musical performance an anonymous figure walks slowly though the gallery holding a bucket of slime. The tension is present, and the inevitable sliming occurs.
#goplayintheyard
2013
Park(ing) Day,
Greater Hartford Art Council,
Hartford, CT
Installation and performance for PARK(ing) Day, an annual open-source global event where citizens, artists and activists collaborate to temporarily transform metered parking spaces into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public places.
I constructed an overtly artificial tree and tire swing surrounded with real sod. Both apocalyptic and hopeful, my installation addressed the loss of green space (reality), construction of artificial space (fiction). Inspired by Dennis the Menace and Huck Finn, I posture as a stereotypical adolescent delinquent playing in a context limited by a parking meter expiring.
The Works of
Jeremy Milk Toast
2011
City Wide Open Studios
Artspace
New Haven, CT
This performance addresses concepts of surface and spectacle intended to examine the intersection of art, audience and amusement. Inspired by performance art from the 1970’s and MTV’s Jackass, I reference bodily danger through physical feats; danger is out weighted by the potential for humor and failure, a common theme in contemporary media.
Iron John 2.0
2012
NOW ON, ATOM Space
Hartford, CT
curated by David Borowski
This performance is an interpretation of the book Iron John: A Book About Men written by the American poet Robert Bly in 1990. Bly uses Jungian psychology and various myths and legends to address contemporary topics of gender. I also used many symbols present in David Lynch’s film Eraserhead from 1977, to locate an intersection between poetry, horror and resolution.
An original score written and performed by New Haven based musician Bill Becket accompanied the performance.
Doppelganger Banger
2011
Alt Space
City Wide Open Studios
Artspace
New Haven, CT
For this performance I constructed a piñata self-portrait and destroyed it. Art imitates life. Artist imitates Art. Artist destroys art in order to imitate life.
I am interested in piñatas for many reasons: history, celebration and birthday parties of my youth. Piñatas illustrate the postmodern premise that something must be taken apart (destroyed) to be understood (enjoyed).
Playing on the Stairs
2011
City Wide Open Studios
Artspace
New Haven, CT
An installation resembling a living room set made from piñatas is destroyed. Addressing ideas of inconsequential adolescent aggression and temporality, this performance is inspired by Paul McCarthy’s aesthetic and his interest in mundane activities and the mess created by them.
An original score written and performed by New Haven based musician Bill Becket accompanied this piece.
Videography by Chris Joy from www.gorkysgranddaughter.com
Video length 4:45 minutes
John O’Donnell's Front Yard Monster Movie Magic Show
2010
Proof Gallery
Boston, MA
curated by William Matelski
Front Yard Monster Movie Magic Show was filmed in front of a live studio audience. This performance is driven by an "Ernest Goes to Camp" aesthetic while referencing Samuel Beckett and the Theater of the Absurd. All visitors where “on set” and participated in the performance as actor, stage hand, robot, warrior, vacation lady, professor or monster and assisted in the creation an unscripted “monster movie magic show.”
Blueberry
2010
New Media, Sex, and Culture in the 21st Century
Museum of New Art
Detroit, MI
curated by Steve Coy, Jonathan Lillie and Jef Bourgeau
BlueBerry is an inversion of Vito Acconci’s notorious Seedbed. Rather than a performer hidden from the visitor, vocally expressing desire and pronouncing his ejaculations, in BlueBerry the performer will be visible to the public, abstaining from physical pleasure but absorbed in the private experience of viewing pornography in a public location.
The title BlueBerry is in reference to the term “Blue Humor” which denotes lewd, profane or obscene humor. BlueBerry is also a reference to a society that is perpetually tantalized by imagery and suggestions, through increasingly varied and mobile technological media, that inflame physical desire but fail to offer satisfaction or release.
Puppy Safari
2010
Visual Arts Resource Center
Open Studios
University of Connecticut
Storrs, CT
Puppy Safari is a performance addressing topics of mass production and quality. I act as safari guide and ultimately reveal a box of puppies. The puppies are small battery operated toys purchased at the dollar store that walk and bark. Made from the lowest quality materials the puppies will only operate for a few minutes before the batteries or mechanics fail, rendering the toy “dead”. The performance ended as the last puppy slowly broke down and quit functioning, creating a Darwinian parable of evolution and predetermined demise or failure.
Radical Dinosaur Maniac Time Machine Gun Shark Explosion
2010
Jorgensen Center for Performing Arts
University of Connecticut
Storrs, CT
curated by Rita Lombardi
This performance follows a three-act narrative structure, complete with costume changes and a set altered by the performed actions. This performance embraces misguided nostalgia as a vehicle to understand the vexing existential obligations of adulthood through illusions of picnics, sleepovers, magic tricks, feats of strength and Kool-Aide stains on a carpet.