Derek O'Connor: Notations: The son and heir of nothing in particular: one more time for the record. Nancy Sever Gallery, Gorman House Arts Centre, 55 Ainslie Ave, Braddon. Closes November 24.
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![Bega Flats on Fire, by Derek O'Connor Bega Flats on Fire, by Derek O'Connor](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/fdcx/doc77uscmtr7rk7hybhgzd.jpg/r0_13_2898_2183_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
The old English saying, 'Don't judge a book by its cover', seems to literally echo throughout this exhibition of paintings by Derek O'Connor. Here most of the works are physically painted on the covers of books, more specifically, they have been painted on the book covers of Time Life World War II publications.
I have always thought of this Canberra-based artist as basically a mover of paint, someone who enjoys the quality of oil paint and the actual physical act of painting.
O'Connor explains that the choice was made for formal, aesthetic and contextual reasons. He writes in his catalogue note, "I have been using World War II (WWII) Time Life book covers as a painting surface. With their photographic images and matter-of-fact title blocks, I find the archival, documentary quality of these covers compelling. Now unhinged from their various contexts (documentary; military history; war porn) to the point of becoming fiction, they also have an inescapable sense of melancholy ... Hardly read, hardly even touched, these Time Life book covers are archives of momentous events that, with the distance of time, seem like trailers to old movies, fictions both related and unrelated to our lives".
![A detail from Sequence, by Derek O'Connor. A detail from Sequence, by Derek O'Connor.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/fdcx/doc77usbj7hv9v1ddy0dgk5.jpg/r0_0_2528_2953_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
It is a curious justification for what is a curious exhibition - slightly quirky, playful and whimsical - ultimately the strategies come together and a sense of harmony prevails throughout the show. I have always thought of this Canberra-based artist as basically a mover of paint, someone who enjoys the quality of oil paint and the actual physical act of painting. In other words, O'Connor is essentially an unreformed old fashion abstract expressionist who revels in the challenges that this approach to painting presents.
The book covers present something of a counterpoint. No matter how much they are over painted, they are anchored in some sort of social history - in an envelope in time. They also impose certain restrictions in scale; they are small paintings, but in no sense miniatures. The paintings present a bit of a game or a conversation between the object with its inscribed or printed history and the energetic, gestural swirls of paint.
The paintings are not all equally successful, but where they do succeed, they do this rather spectacularly. One of the most successful works at the exhibition is Sequence (2019), catalogued as oil on WWII Time Life book cover and measuring, when framed, 81 by 77 centimetres. There are two flattened out painted green book covers with their spines, like seams running down the centre of the composition, and structurally these present three small tableaux - like small canvases - on which are presented vibrant polychrome and intense passages of paint. There is an effective tension created between these competing surfaces.
![Returned, by Derek O'Connor Returned, by Derek O'Connor](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/fdcx/doc77usc4ne4cgj1wohgk5.jpg/r0_0_1760_2952_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Another successful and striking painting has the simple title Returned (2019), again oil on WWII Time Life book cover. Here the book cover has been pressed vertically and a striking orange-red spreads from the lower part of the composition through to the top. The sky blue background invades and overlaps the space occupied by the rising form. Despite the scale, it is quite a sophisticated painting - a chromatic juggling act - keeping all of the elements suspended and in a state of considerable tension. The artist manages to balance a gestural spontaneity in the paint application with a quite sophisticated compositional structure. Scattered throughout the exhibition there are a number of 'non-book' paintings of which the small oil, Bega flats on fire (2019), is one of the finest.
Since he first started exhibiting in the late 1980s, O'Connor has established a reputation for making consistently good paintings - this show adds to this reputation.