Artist Catherine Owens on her collaboration with U2 for their Zoo TV tour.
Catherine Owens has been living in New York for the best part of ten years. A fine art graduate, she has created drawings, sculpture, photography and video. Her installation based work has been exhibited both in Ireland and the United States.
A contemporary of U2, Catherine Owens was asked by the band to work with them on concepts for their Zoo TV tour. Based on the album 'Achtung Baby' the tour broke new ground for turning a rock concert into a multimedia spectacle.
Catherine Owens tells, Pat Kenny how the video for the U2 song ‘Numb’ was created by performance art video makers EBN (Emergency Broadcast Network) whose work she was familiar with. They were exactly the type of artists U2 was looking for when designing the Zoo TV tour as their work was,
Based on images from television.
The Trabant car also featured in the Zoo TV experience. These small, slow and poorly designed automobiles were the most common cars driven in the former East Germany during the Soviet era and became associated with the thousands who travelled westward after the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification of Germany.
Transformed for the stage, they became something entirely new thanks to the creative team.
I just happened to be in the right place at the right time when they needed a painter.
What if this was all a big gamble, and if Zoo TV was a flop? Catherine Owens was confident that the tour and the concepts behind it would be well received.
I think it was a very solid idea to begin with.
This episode of ‘Kenny Live’ was broadcast on 12 February 1994. The presenter is Pat Kenny.
