In January 2023 curator Corina L. Apostol invited Dunhill and O’Brien to make new work for a two-person exhibition with Latvian-based artist Kristaps Ancans at Das Weisse Haus, Vienna. Apostol proposed the title Reverse Homesickness, drawing on the German word Fernweh — a longing for elsewhere, sometimes understood as the opposite of homesickness.
Dunhill and O’Brien began with an accidental fiction generated sixteen years earlier. For an exhibition made during a residency in Tokyo in 2007, they had written a press release in English which was translated into Japanese and subsequently translated back into English for the Tokyo Art Beat website. Somewhere in this chain the project became considerably more ambitious: instead of making clogs as mountain tools with which to model a clay form, the translated account appeared to describe the artists constructing an actual mountain landscape in the gallery and climbing it with homemade apparatus.
For Reverse Homesickness they decided to explore this mistranslation. The resulting works, shown from May to July 2023, were tailor-made to fit Dunhill and O’Brien and upholstered in a solid blue canvas. Designed to be worn, carried or otherwise put into service, they included improbable pieces of equipment for two increasingly comfort-conscious travellers: one work combined something of a stretcher, cupboard and seat, potentially allowing the pair to carry it to a view so they might sit down to better appreciate it.
Part implement, part accessory and part sculpture, these works formed the Double Happiness Collection. The title draws on the Chinese association of “double happiness” with marriage, while also borrowing the language of fashion collections, coordinated luggage and matching accessories. Their practicality remains questionable, but the possibility of transporting, wearing and using them is integral to their construction.
Meanwhile, Dunhill and O’Brien’s ongoing series of Stone Appreciation videos was shown on the gallery’s unusual collection of monitors, using every available screen regardless of size or quality. Differing in scale and distinctly boxy, each was mounted on a low platform trolley, giving the impression that the equipment had only just arrived or might shortly be moved elsewhere. Across the screens, Dunhill and O’Brien could be seen repeatedly measuring rocks — a series of methodical and faintly inexplicable activities.
Special thanks are due to Dr Corina L Apostol, Kristaps Ancāns, and the team at Das Weisse Haus. The project was supported by Das Weisse Haus.