DEREK O'CONNOR ERASURE AND SHAPE - 6 MARCH - 3 APRIL 2022 - NANCY ...
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DEREK O’CONNOR
ERASURE AND SHAPE
6 MARCH – 3 APRIL 2022
NANCY SEVER | GALLERY
Level 1, 131 City Walk
(next door to King O’Malley’s)
Canberra City ACT 2601
Open: Wednesday – Sunday: 11 am – 5 pm.
T+61 2 6262 8448
Mob.+ 61 0416249102
nancysevergallery.com.au
nancy.sever@iinet.net.au
ARTIST STATEMENT To be a painter in the 21st century is to swim in an ever-expanding matrix of technology, special effects, photographic processes and art created using installation, video and performance. Making art-historical references in your work means selecting from a monstrous array of art movements in a world rife with political, environmental and humanitarian issues that are all potential fodder for art. Conceptually, you can be tightly focused or as multifarious as you wish. Concurrent with my interest in the recuperation of anachronistic technologies, books, expressive painting – lies a deep commitment to the medium of paint as a vehicle to embed meaning through a process of application and erasure. Given the saturated world of images in which we live, with this new body of work I wanted to slow down, to look into rather than just scan the surface of these ghost-like shapes as they slowly reveal their fugitive form through paint and erasure. The question becomes not what to paint but how to paint.
These days the Artist Statement is an almost obligatory appendage to an artist’s commercial exhibition catalogue, yet it’s an enterprise that can be somewhat fraught as it pits explanatory rhetoric against ocular sensation. In a profile of the artist David Salle for the New Yorker published nearly 30 years ago the American essayist Janet Malcolm wrote: ‘I have never found anything any artist has said about his work interesting’. Salle said (in his obituary of Malcolm published in ArtForum last year), that once his vanity recovered ‘the veracity of [her] verdict was clear’, although ‘at odds with the prevailing reverence for that peculiar literary artifact, the artist’s statement… Like any good analyst, she was only interested in the story behind the story.’ And the story behind the story in Erasure and shape is the paintings. To read or view, the choice is yours. Derek O’Connor 22/02/2022
Go figure! These paintings are abstract and yet, to my mind, curiously figurative. Certainly, they play beautifully with the dynamics of figure/ground. In fact, figure and ground keep flipping. As broad brushed erasures emphatically carve out shapes from an underlying complex of layered gestures, just which is figure, and which is ground? The sharply defined glyphs or cyphers which result take on an intriguing and resonant figural presence - like images of un-nameable things or abstract utterances. They swell into irregular forms and reach back into unmeasurable spaces. They tease us and prompt all kinds of pre- linguistic associations. Painting has this potential – to take us to a realm of experience and sensation outside of ready language. These curiously abstract figurations take us there. Ruth Waller 2022
Derek O’Connor Civic, 2021- 2022 oil on canvas 51 cm x 41 cm $1,400
Derek O’Connor Counternance. 2021- 2022 oil on canvas 36 cm x 31 cm $1,200 SOLD
Derek O’Connor Dwelling. 2021 - 2022 oil on canvas 31 cm x 36 cm $1,200
Derek O’Connor Fox News. 2021- 2022 oil on canvas 73 cm x 60.5 cm $1,800 SOLD
Derek O’Connor Goat Crane. 2021 - 2022 oil on canvas 36 cm x 31 cm $1,200 SOLD
Derek O’Connor Green Space. 2021 - 2022 oil on canvas 198 cm x 167.5 cm $18,000
Derek O’Connor Homeless. 2021 - 2022 oil on canvas 36 cm x 31 cm $1,200
Derek O’Connor Master Hound Butterfly, Aspen Island. 2021- 2022 oil on canvas 198 cm x 167.5 cm $18,000
Derek O’Connor Mr New-Man. 2021- 2022 oil on canvas 152.3 cm x 116.8 cm $7,000
Derek O’Connor Oblomov. 2021- 2022 oil on canvas 36 cm x 31 cm $1,200 SOLD
Derek O’Connor Research Painter. 2021- 2022 oil on canvas 198 cm x 167.5 cm $18,000
Derek O’Connor Pogo stick. 2021- 2022 oil on canvas 51 cm x 41 cm $1,400
Derek O’Connor The Present. 2021- 2022 oil on canvas 36.7 cm x 46 cm $1,200
Derek O’Connor Untitled. 2021- 2022 oil on canvas 36 cm x 31 cm $1,200
Derek O’Connor Untitled. 2021- 2022 oil on canvas 36 cm x 31 cm $1,200
Derek O’Connor Untitled. 2021- 2022 oil on canvas 36 cm x 31 cm $1,200 SOLD
Derek O’Connor Untitled. 2021- 2022 oil on canvas 51 cm x 41 cm $1,400
Derek O’Connor Untitled. 2021- 2022 oil on canvas 46.5 cm x 36 cm $1,400
Derek O’Connor Untitled. 2021- 2022 oil on canvas 51 cm x 41 cm $1,400
Derek O’Connor Untitled Bust 1. 2021- 2022 oil on Dutch beechwood panel 60 cm x 40 cm $1,600
Derek O’Connor Untitled Bust 2. 2021- 2022 oil on Dutch beechwood panel 60 cm x 40 cm $1,600
Derek O’Connor Untitled Bust 3. 2021- 2022 oil on Dutch beechwood panel 60 cm x 40 cm $1,600
Derek O’Connor Water Head. 2021- 2022 oil on canvas 41 cm x 31 cm $1,400
Derek O’Connor Weather Report. 2021- 2022 oil on canvas 198 cm x 167.5 cm $18,000
Derek O’Connor
DATE & PLACE OF BIRTH: 28 March 1957, Warwickshire, England SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Adelaide, Australia from 1969; lived and worked for periods of time Since 1988 his work has been included in 98 group shows in
in Tasmania, Melbourne, Cologne and London in the 1990s and Sydney, Perth, Canberra, Hobart, Melbourne, Adelaide and
early 2000s; currently lives and works in Canberra. Cologne (Germany).
Contemporary art surveys and themed exhibitions in public
1988 BA (Visual), Canberra School of Art (now ANU School of Art & galleries in which his work was selected include VIEW FINDING:
Design) Monash Gallery of Art 1990-2020 (2020); Celebration: 20 years of
collecting visual art at CMAG (2018); Monochrome: empty and
1992 Graduate Diploma, University of Tasmania School of Art full (Victorian College of the Arts, 2018); Velocity (Drill Hall Gallery,
ANU 2014); Something in the air: collage and assemblage in
Canberra region art (CMAG, 2010); It’s a beautiful day: New
SOLO EXHIBITIONS painting in Australia 2 (AGNSW, 2002); On the brink: abstraction of
the ‘90s (Heide, Melbourne 2000); Recent acquisitions (NGA,
Since 1992 he has held 28 solo exhibitions in commercial galleries
(and several artist-run-initiatives) including in Sydney: Watters 1997); Acquisitions of contemporary Australian art (NGV, 1996);
Gallery (2010-18); Legge Gallery (1992-2004); Melbourne: Karen The Derwent Collection: Australian art of the 1980s and 1990s
Woodbury Gallery (2006-09); Hobart: Dick Bett Gallery (1994-96); (TMAG, 1995); and Moët & Chandon touring exhibition (nationally
and Canberra: Helen Maxwell Gallery (2005-09); Nancy Sever 1993).
Gallery (2019).
He has been a finalist in prize exhibitions including: Blake Prize
In 2017 he had a solo show, At home, he’s a tourist, at Canberra (National Art School, Sydney 2009), Mosman Art Prize (Sydney,
Contemporary Art Space, and in 2007 a 10-year survey of his work 2007), Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize (Bendigo, Vic 2007);
was held at the Canberra Museum and Gallery. Muswellbrook Open Art Prize (Muswell Regional Arts Centre, 2005).GRANTS AND AWARDS PUBLICATIONS
Prizes, grants and awards include: Megalo Artist in Residence 2020 VIEW FINDING: Monash Gallery of Art 1990-2020
program, Canberra (2017); Capital Arts Patrons Organisation (catalogue), MGA
(CAPO) Fellowship, Canberra (2007); Canberra Contemporary Art
Space Inaugural Art Prize (2003); ACT Department of Arts and 2019 Grishin, Sasha: ‘Derek O’Connor’s latest show at
Culture Artist Grant, Studio Residency, Cologne, Germany (1998); Nancy Sever Gallery in Canberra is quirky,
Pat Corrigan Award for exhibition development (1995); Tasmanian playful and curious’, Canberra Times, 15
Arts Advisory Board Individual Arts Grant (1992); CAPO Individual November
Arts Grant (1990); and Lend Lease Painting Award (1988). 2018 Haynes, Peter: ‘At home he’s a tourist’,
Canberra Times, 1 February
COLLECTIONS
2017 Broker, David: He’s a Tourist (catalogue essay),
Derek O’Connor’s work is held in public collections including: Canberra Contemporary Art Space
National Gallery of Australia; Australian War Memorial; Artbank;
National Gallery of Victoria; Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery; 2017 Capezio, Oscar: ‘At home he’s a tourist’, Art
Canberra Museum and Gallery; Art Gallery of Ballarat; Monash Almanac, November
Gallery of Art, Melbourne; Tamworth Regional Gallery; University of
Technology, Sydney; University of Wollongong. Corporate 2014 Maloon, Terence: Velocity (catalogue essay),
collections include: ABN AMRO, Aurora Place, Sydney (Renzo Piano DHG publishing
building); Allens Arthur Robinson, Sydney (installation commission); 2010 Clark, Deborah & Mark Van Veen: Something in the
Art and Australia, Melbourne; Austcorp, Sydney; Pan Pacific Hotels air: collage and assemblage in Canberra
Group Collection; RACV Collection, Melbourne; and USB
region art (catalogue essay), CMAG
Collection, Sydney.2009 ‘Derek O’Connor, Galleries, Box Office’ Age 2007 Grishin, Sasha: ‘Unbridled, hedonistic joy of paint,
Magazine, March Hetherington, S: ‘Derek O’Connor’, The Canberra Times 20 November
Art World, Issue 7, Feb/March
Lakin, Shaune: ‘Them’, Photofile #79
Broker, David & Yolande Norris: ‘Artnotes’, Art
Monthly Australia, March Van Veen, Mark: ‘Derek O’Connor 10 Year
Selection’, Art World, Issue February/March
Nelson, Robert: ‘Aesthetic appetite for eating their art
out’, The Age, 11 March 2006 Hansen, David: ‘Ominous modernists’,
Sightlines, Age, 24 November
Grishin, Sasha: ‘Bold interventions’, The Canberra
Times, May Bossy, J: ‘Derek O’Connor Paintings’ (essay),
Ulhmann, P: ‘Derek O’Connor’ (catalogue Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne
essay), Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne 2005 Grishin, Sasha: ‘Inner strength on display’, The
Gates, Merryn: Lost in a Kiss, catalogue essay for Canberra Times, 29 September
commissioned installation at Allens Arthur 2004 Backhouse, M: ‘Abstract landscapes,
Robinson, Deutsche Bank Building, Sydney Around the Galleries, A2, Age, 27 November
2008 Holt, M: ‘Marie Hagerty and Derek O’Connor in Nichols, Jonathon: Derek O’Connor (catalogue
Canberra’, Art Monthly Australia, Summer essay)
Clark, Deborah: ‘Derek O’Connor’, 25th CAPO 2003 Foster, Ernest: Review in Public of Individuals [NAS],
Auction (catalogue), CAPO No.4, Feb-Apr
Clark, Deborah: ‘Derek O’Connor’, Reflections:
Canberra Museum and Gallery Collection Lamark, Richard: Review of It’s a beautiful day‘,
Public of Individuals [NAS], No.4 Feb Apr2003 Fern, L.: ‘People at play’, The Sydney Morning 1995 Hammond, V: Chameleon: A Decade
Herald, 23 March (catalogue), CAST
Chapman, Chris: ‘Bette Davis eyes’, Art Hammond, V : The Derwent Collection:
Monthly Australia, August Australian Art of the 1980s and 1990s, TMAG
Ashcroft, Michael: ‘Ugly paintings are always 1994 Cato, N. (ed): Fourth Australian Contemporary Art Fair,
framed’, Muse, Dec/Jan 03/04 ACGA
Byrne, Lisa: SHIT (catalogue essay), CCAS, Nov-Dec 1993 Heathcote, Christopher: ‘Möet & Chandon’, The Age
Gates, Merryn: SHIT (catalogue essay), CCAS, Nov-Dec Heathcote, Christopher: ‘Contemporary
Australian paintings’, The Age
2002 McAuliffe, Chris & Bala Starr: It’s a Beautiful Day: New
Painting in Australia 2 (exhibition catalogue), Art Gallery Annear, Judy: Möet & Chandon Touring
of New South Wales, Sydney Exhibition (exhibition catalogue), Melbourne
Loxley, Anne: ‘A day in the domain’, The Sydney Mendelssohn, Joanna: ‘Popping the cork’,
Morning Herald, 27 November Bulletin, March
2001 ABC TV: Coast to Coast, arts program, August 1990 Haynes, Peter: ‘The land sited’, Unreal City, no.1,
Canberra Contemporary Art Space
1996 King, N & Simeon Kronenberg: Abstraction Now
(exhibition catalogue), Geelong Art Gallery Haynes, Peter: ‘Reviews’, Art Monthly Australia,
September
Butterfield, B: ‘Messy & restless, Contemporary Art Centre
of SA’, db Magazine issue #131, SA
O’Connell, Stephen: Messy & Restless (exhibition
catalogue), CACSANANCY SEVER | GALLERY Level 1, 131 City Walk (next door to King O’Malley’s) Canberra City ACT 2601 Open: Wednesday – Sunday: 11 am – 5 pm. T+61 2 6262 8448 Mob.+ 61 0416249102 nancysevergallery.com.au nancy.sever@iinet.net.au
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