Ploughing the clouds / Brendan O'Neill

About

O’Neill continues to employ his unique visual language, using text gleaned from various sources as his catalyst for a probing understanding of the world around him. The enigmatic paintings don’t offer up an easy interpretation or reading, capturing the world in slow motion through static mental reverberations, transcribed like digital Rorschach blots that exist very much on their own terms, forever searching for a home page. The meditative hum of the computer screen is clear to see in his subtle illusionary digital finish. While the surface pulls you in, the undecipherable enigmatic word forms simultaneously push you away with a spatial conflation of foreground and background. The observer oscillates between reading and viewing, which results in multiple associative interpretations, with the certainty of a half remembered dream.
 

Biography

Brendan O’Neill graduated from the University of Hertfordshire BA Hons Fine Art 1994–1997 before doing a Masters in Fine Art at University Ulster from 2002–2004. O’Neill worked as a visiting lecturer in the Fine Art Department at the University of Hertfordshire from 1999–2002 and was awarded a three-year studio fellowship at the Digswell Art Trust 1998-2001. He co-directed at Catalyst Arts, Belfast, from 2004–2007. Between 2007 - 2016 he worked as the Gallery Coordinator and Studio Administrator for Queen Street Studios & Gallery, Belfast. 

Recent exhibitions include 2016 ‘Chroma: Blue Issue’, Safehouse, Peckham, London, England; 2015 ‘NN Contemporary Art’, Northampton, England; 2015 ‘Vanishing Futures, Collective Histories XII’, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast; 2015 ‘Still Bunker’ East Belfast Festival 2015, St. Martin’s Church, Belfast; 2014 ‘Eastern Approaches’ Museum of St Albans, Hertfordshire, England; 2014 ‘The Faraway Nearby’ F.E.McWilliam Gallery, Banbridge, N. Ireland; 2012 ‘Instances of Agreement’ Kao Yuan Art Center, Taiwan; 2012 ‘Text & Context’ Art Language Location, Cambridge, England.