Accidental Journey is the outcome of an AHRC Fellowship that O’Riley completed in 2008. An artist’s book, it features scientific, literary and artistic ruminations on exploration and stargazing. Using image and text, O’Riley brings together and gives form to multiple sources, narratives and serendipitous encounters. The research develops his chance encounter with a small Irish flag that he came across in the Dunsink Observatory outside Dublin. Documenting O’Riley’s intellectual and creative journey that begins with the discovery of the flag – which ostensibly travelled to the moon and back on board the 1969 Apollo 11 spacecraft – the text culminates with an open-ended resolution from Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins in response to O’Riley’s enquiries about the flag’s provenance.
Accidental Journey is also featured in O’Riley’s essay, ‘Chance and improbability’, which appeared in the peer-reviewed online journal Flusser Studies, Issue 12 (2011). In addition to reflecting on Accidental Journey and building on the research that led to the book, significantly the article focuses on the role of the improbable or unexpected in art practice, discussing the impact of these concepts in relation to the work of philosopher Vilém Flusser.
The book has been accepted into the collections of the Special Collections Library at Tate, Printed Matter (New York), Artwords, Bookartbookshop, Camden Arts Centre, RIBA, Magma, Royal Observatory & National Maritime Museum (London), Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Science Gallery Dublin. Accidental Journey was reviewed by Stephen Bury in Art Monthly No. 348 (2011). O’Riley subsequently gave a paper on the artist’s book at ‘Impact 7’, a conference held at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, in September 2011. The proceedings of the conference were published in a book entitled, Intersections and Counterpoints: Proceedings of Impact 7, An International Multi-Disciplinary Printmaking Conference (2013).