Olly O'Neill
BA (Hons) Fine Art
Olly O’Neill’s works intend to navigate the territories of popular culture, commerce, morality and machismo, harnessing gestural mark-making, DIY and poetry. The words and typefaces are chosen to poke fun at the insincerity of consumer text, using affirmative language to compose images which confront the viewer and impose thoughts of life vs consumer culture.
Some materials and processes are borrowed from the DIY world, and others from twentieth-century painting. At times these intersect with selected images from video games which would be synonymous with the social groups of individuals growing up in the 2000s. O’Neill’s works become a statement of the perpetual struggle to become a painter in an ever-changing, secretive and exclusive industry.