Owen Boss: ‘This is a magical Macnas parade with climate change at its core’
Lead Designer of this year’s Macnas parade, ‘An Treun’, visual artist and designer Owen Boss talks process, essential supports needed to sustain Irish art, and the points of reference he keeps returning to.
Last weekend, world renowned masters of storytelling and pioneers of imagination Macnas took to the streets of Galway with their brand new Halloween spectacle, An Truen: The Summoning of the Lost.
The spectacular, shape-shifting parade is inspired by a long-lost tale by Dracula author Bram Stoker and the haunting call of the vanished Corncrake, and it will be taking to Dublin on the evening of Sunday, November 2 as part of the Dublin City Council Bram Stoker Festival. This incredible new parade explores how our culture, memory and climate intertwine and asks what it means to hold on to what we’re losing.
For this year’s spectacle, Co-Artistic Directors of ANU Productions were taking charge of proceedings with Louise Lowe as Parade Director and Owen Boss as Lead Designer. Owen is a Dublin-based designer and visual artist who has worked on multiple award-winning productions both nationally and internationally. He makes off-site work as well as work for the stage and is renowned for his large-scale immersive designs. In 2009 he co-founded ANU and is the co-artistic director.
Was a career as a designer and visual artist something you always aspired to?
Not really, it started to come into focus in my mid-teens . My secondary school didn’t have art as a subject so I did it outside of school. My brother Fred had attended the same school and went on to become an art teacher, so I had seen a path to a creative career.
What is your process when creating a new work?
It changes from project to project. I have no specific formula. It can be an idea that has floated around my brain for some time. The ones that don’t leave and keep popping up in my mind are the ones that I tend to pursue. In terms of artistic process I would say that a lot of what I do starts with drawing. I use it as a tool of exploration and research. For the Macnas parade An Treun it was essential. I produced large scale charcoal drawings not only as a research tool but also as a means to communicate ideas to the Macnas team. I would also say that collaboration is a key component of my work.
Tell us about ANU Productions.
ANU is a multidisciplinary production company that presents award-winning theatre, visual art and socially engaged artworks. We place the audience at the very centre of each production, creating an immersive live experience where audiences have agency and proximity to the fierce mesmeric worlds we create. Established in 2009, ANU is led by myself, theatre maker Louise Lowe and producers Lynnette Moran and Matt Smyth. Together we’ve created over 50 seminal works, public art commissions, gallery installations and museum interpretations, growing a national and global reputation for excellence.
How did you come to be involved with Macnas?
Their Executive Director Johnny O’Reilly got in contact with me. I had seen a few Macnas parades whenever they came to Dublin and had always been impressed with how their large-scale spectacle appeared to warp the very fabric of familiar Dublin city architecture.
An Treun is set to be a spectacular, shape-shifting parade, what can spectators expect?
They can expect to be surprised, enchanted and bewitched. It’s going to be a magical parade with climate change at its core and gothic undertones. I hope that the parade I’ve designed will continue in the tradition of affecting how people see the city as I’ve seen it do so many times before.
Who is someone you look up to in the realm of the Irish arts?
I admire the work of Ailbhe Ní Bhriain and Colin Martin. I am also continually inspired by Louise Lowe.
What are some of your favourite subjects, or specific works that you’ve created?
The Wernicke’s Area is a work that means a lot to me. Created in 2022 it was a highly personal project that responded to the medical condition of my wife Debbie and marked the end of ANU’s residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA). It was a multidisciplinary installation featuring tapestries, sound design, video and live performance.
In 2014 Debbie was admitted to hospital for surgery to remove a previously undiagnosed meningioma brain tumour. Since surgery, her everyday life has been affected by epilepsy. The tumour was located in the Wernicke’s Area of the brain. This is the part of the brain that is involved with written and spoken word comprehension. When Debbie suffers a seizure, the symptoms manifest as audio hallucinations and aphasia. A trained soprano, Debbie can no longer remember lyrics to even the simplest of songs.
The artwork saw key partnerships evolve across disciplines, seeing me collaborate with neurophysiologist Professor Mark Cunningham of Trinity College Dublin and Emily Howard, a composer and director of PRISM Practice and Research in Science and Music at the Royal Northern College of Music Manchester.
I developed a series of pattern designs that were made as large scale tapestry hangings and installed in the IMMA gallery. Professor Cunningham provided raw data of brain cells in seizure which featured as sound in the final installation. Howard composed a new piece of music that drew on Debbie’s seizure diaries. This was performed live over the opening weekend by mezzo soprano Rosie Middleton and viola player Stephen Upshaw and responded to George F. Handel’s ‘Ombra Mai Fu’, which was Debbie’s favourite aria to sing.
What has been the highlight of your career so far?
I’ve had a number of highlights in my career. Showing The Wernicke’s Area at the Irish Museum of Modern Art has been a real highlight. One of my personal favourite works is The Boys of Foley Street. It was an immersive performance shown at Dublin Theatre Festival in 2012 and looked at the chaos of Dublin inner city in the 1970s. Being invited to show works at Home, Manchester (Angel Meadow), Manchester International Festival (The Anvil) and London International Festival of Theatre (These Rooms) have been special.
What is one thing you wish everyone knew about working in the arts?
I would like them to realise the benefits of the arts. I am reluctant to reduce the arts to economic benefits, but that is probably the entry point for public buy in. For instance this years’ Macnas parade is employing over 113 people across a number of months. This figure includes artists and crew. On the day there will be another 56 crew employed with 112 volunteers working alongside them.
An audience of 80,000 was predicted to attend the parade in Galway with 50,000 more expected in Dublin to see it as part of the Dublin City Council Bram Stoker Festival. This audience will be booking hotel rooms, buying dinners and coffees. The economic benefits are apparent from these figures. If we invest in and support the arts, the benefits are huge. That is why something like the Basic Income for the Arts is so essential.
What would you say to a budding artist/designer unsure of their next steps?
That this problem sounds very familiar to me. In the process of making art you should frequently be unsure of your next steps. Enjoy and embrace being unsure. That is the process.
Owen Boss shares his life in culture
The last thing I saw and loved… I went to see Ailbhe Ní Bhrian’s exhibition The Dream Pools Intervals at the Hugh Lane Gallery. It was an amazing exhibition of large scale tapestries that seemed to reflect the world’s chaotic unsure present.
The book I keep coming back to… Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth is a graphic novel that I will keep coming back to. I read it last year after it was described to me as the Ulysses of comic books. I’ve also read the Lord of the Rings a number of times. It’s a firm family favourite.
I find inspiration in… Everyday life and people. It can be the most simplest of ordinary things or the most extraordinary.
My favourite film is… I love 2001: A Space Odyssey. The future world that Kubrick proposed was so believable and the design was exceptional. Also Paddington 2 is an exceptional and flawless film, and I’ve loved The Big Lebowski since I saw it in the cinema in the late ‘90s.
The song I listen to to get in the zone is… ‘Time to Dance’ by The Shoes or ‘Pressure Drop’ by Toots and the Maytals.
The last book I recommended is… I was finding it really hard to read a few years back so I deleted all social media apps off my phone and rejoined my local library. I’ve really enjoyed reading ever since. I recently recommended the Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel and Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman.
I never leave the house without… Besides my phone it would probably be my glasses. I started wearing them to read a few years ago and now if I forget them it’s a blurred world and really affects my day.
The piece of work etc. I still think about is… I was designing a show in New York a few years ago and got the opportunity to see David Byrne’s American Utopia. It was amazing. I really liked how it phased across genres. It was a music gig that borrowed the language of dance and theatre. I like work that is complicated in form and sits between genres.
The best advice I’ve ever gotten… It probably came from my parents. It wasn’t necessarily advice but more of a way of being and living. We were encouraged to find something we loved to do and to pursue that.
The art that means the most to me is… Everybody in the Place, An Incomplete History of Britain 1984 – 1992 by Jeremy Deller is an artwork that I love and find something different every time I watch it. It’s a film in which the artist goes to a London secondary school and delivers a lecture to the students on the role that rave culture played in the social upheaval of Britain in the 1980s and early ‘90s. He weaves a tale from the gay clubs of Chicago through the warehouse raves across the UK via the political and social unrest of the time. And I love how it finishes.
The most challenging thing about being an artist is… Going back to the creative well constantly. Each time I worry this will be the one where there’s nothing there.
If I wasn’t a designer/artist, I would be… I probably would be a secondary school art teacher.
The magic of art to me is… The ability to make someone look and think about their world differently.
Photography by Emilija Jefremova.
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