Simon O’Reilly: “Elsewhere and Other Fragments” @ CT State Community College Middlesex
In Pegasus Gallery and The Niche:
September 15 - October 27, 2025
Opening Reception on Wednesday September 17, 5:00-7:00pm at Pegasus Gallery.
Simon O’Reilly’s work explores the intersections of image-making, narrative form, and emerging technology. Drawing from disciplines such as sculpture, visual effects, cinema, and digital animation, he creates audiovisual experiences that question perception, materiality, and the emotional weight of images. Whether projecting a film in a darkened room, composing digitally altered video, or experimenting with motion capture and game engines, O’Reilly is interested in how screens mediate memory, identity, and presence.
This exhibition brings together a series of self-directed works that explore speculative image-making, ritual, and the boundaries of narrative structure. At its center is Elsewhere, a silent black-and-white short film that follows a solitary oyster harvester encountering a creature made of shells. The work is contemplative and immersive, and this installation is designed to mirror the film’s pacing—slowed, reflective, and intimate. The creature’s costume, which will be exhibited separately, serves as a sculptural anchor that expands the film’s mythology beyond the screen.
Surrounding Elsewhere are smaller works: early short films, digital experiments, motion-captured fragments, and animated 3D prints. These pieces lean into genre—science fiction, speculative fiction, surrealism—but are modest in tone. They were created during moments of curiosity, when experimenting with new tools or aesthetics. Many contain humor, abstraction, or visual ambiguity, and most were made independently, outside the larger collaborative film environment O’Reilly often works in.
Simon O’Reilly’s is a Middletown based media artist, filmmaker and cinematographer. He is an adjunct instructor in CT State Middlesex’s New Media Production program and teaching Film Production this fall semester. O’Reilly holds degrees from Concordia University (Montréal, Canada) and from Middlesex Community College (Middletown, CT).
See this exhibition’s companion website at: Elsewhere & Other Fragments
Pegasus Gallery is located within the library on the first floor of Chapman Hall
Hours: Monday-Thursday: 8:30 a.m.-7 p.m.; Friday: 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m.
The Niche is in Founders Hall across from the Registrar’s Office
Hours: Monday through Thursday 7:30 a.m.–5 p.m.; Fridays 8 a.m.–4 p.m.
https://ctstate.edu/art-galleries/#middlesex
CT State Community College Middlesex
100 Training Hill Road
Middletown, CT 06457