INFORMATION
    Mel O’Callaghan b. 1975 Sydney, Australia. Lives and works in Sydney and Paris.





︎ CV
︎︎︎ Email
︎ Instagram
︎︎︎ Galerie Allen
︎︎︎ Cassandra Bird


















CHOP, 2010


Chop, 2010, 16mm colour film, stereo sound, 7 minutes 13 seconds






Film credits

Performer: Laurent Montaron
Production assistant: Magalie Meunier




















































































MEL O’CALLAGHAN




The Fall   2004

Colour video with sound, 4 minutes 8 seconds (looped)




Courtesy of the artist; Galerie Allen, Paris; and Cassandra Bird, Sydney




O'Callaghan's first film, The Fall, sets the tone for the artist's enduring focus on locations present and haunted by water and the thresholds of human experience. The Fall is a sudden death played out via a slow-motion pictorial script: corporeal gestures, a sculptural billowing parachute, the dark swell of the ocean, a body plunging into the water, and, finally, a slow descent to the ocean floor. The film is set to an incongruous soundtrack that is part-vocal, part-instrumental and the fragmented narrative shifts attention between physical forms and interior psychological states. The Fall is the artist’s reflection of French oceanographer, filmmaker, and undersea explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s ruminations on the visual fragmentation of deep-sea diving and the odd euphoria of submergence. The Fall displays O’Callaghan’s fierce insistence on going deeper, beneath the surface and beyond the physical, to experiment with frequencies of emotion and consciousness.







Film credits

Performer: Daniel Carlisle

Composer: Kim Moyes

Cinematographer: Benjamin Storrier

Editor: Mel O’Callaghan and Andrew van der Westhuyzen, Collider Films

Stunt coordinator: Brit Sooby

Producer: Clemens Habicht


































































































MEL O’CALLAGHAN




The Fall   2004

Colour video with sound, 4 minutes 8 seconds (looped)




Courtesy of the artist; Galerie Allen, Paris; and Cassandra Bird, Sydney




O'Callaghan's first film, The Fall, sets the tone for the artist's enduring focus on locations present and haunted by water and the thresholds of human experience. The Fall is a sudden death played out via a slow-motion pictorial script: corporeal gestures, a sculptural billowing parachute, the dark swell of the ocean, a body plunging into the water, and, finally, a slow descent to the ocean floor. The film is set to an incongruous soundtrack that is part-vocal, part-instrumental and the fragmented narrative shifts attention between physical forms and interior psychological states. The Fall is the artist’s reflection of French oceanographer, filmmaker, and undersea explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s ruminations on the visual fragmentation of deep-sea diving and the odd euphoria of submergence. The Fall displays O’Callaghan’s fierce insistence on going deeper, beneath the surface and beyond the physical, to experiment with frequencies of emotion and consciousness.







Film credits

Performer: Daniel Carlisle

Composer: Kim Moyes

Cinematographer: Benjamin Storrier

Editor: Mel O’Callaghan and Andrew van der Westhuyzen, Collider Films

Stunt coordinator: Brit Sooby

Producer: Clemens Habicht