A cascade of culture
INFINITE REGRESS, Robert O’Connor, Moonah Arts Centre, Until November 26
As I stood in front of the main offering in Robert O’Connor’s latest exhibition, I swapped ideas and inferences from the work with a fellow traveller in the art world as to what we were both gazing upon. My companion suggested they saw the chaos of the internet in the massive wall-devouring work, composed of myriad panels and images. I countered that it wasn’t the internet, due to an absence of pornography and allusions to streaming content, but it occurred to me later my colleague had been quite correct.
O’Connor’s work invites and suggests as many subjective interpretations as you might want to dredge up from its complex depths, and more than that, it’s tremendous, stimulating fun to indulge in this activity.
O’Connor can make paint do extraordinary things, and in this show he really cuts loose: everything here just looks great. It’s different kind of exhibition, arising as it does from a residency program at Hobart College; so it’s crucial to note that what we’re seeing here is the result of complex, guided collaboration with the student body. And O’Connor has made excellent use of this opportunity – this is exceptional work from a reliable artist. It takes the very notion of painting as a way to create art, pulls it apart, and asks what you can do with it.
His latest works include satire and undermining, but this trademark japery is informed by a deep knowledge of painting’s history, as O’Connor is a master of reverent irreverence. He gathers images and creates enticing juxtaposition – O’Connor understands that borrowing, influencing, copying and re-contextualising have been part of painting for an incredibly long time, and that when he does it, he’s doing something which the greatest painters of history did, but he’s also sending it up. That’s O’Connor for you – he’s in love with the form but he’s also aware of the nudity of the emperor. History and research are just as much a part of O’Connor’s toolkit as his brushes are.
You can and should get lost in this work – I ‘saw’ the wall of television screens that featured in the David Bowie film The Man Who Fell To Earth, my colleague saw the internet, someone else might see a collage of images from publications, and everyone is right, and wrong, and everything in between. O’Connor paints the cascade of culture, he collects and creates context, he paints beautifully and then asks us what we see as well. You can search for meaning as long as you want, and meaning is there to be found and made, but O’Connor, in an act of generosity leaves that to each person who engages. I found myself singing the infamous ‘Fish Heads’ song, and my colleague had no idea what I was on about. If you don’t either, you could google it, or you could go and see this excellent show, and find yourself provoked by one of the best artists we currently have, working with students to make a deeply satisfying exhibition that’s one of the essential shows of 2022.
The artist is represented by Bett Gallery.