Statement

Written by: Julian Freeman, Author of ‘British Art, A walk round the rusty pier’.

'London Ireland', exhibition of paintings by Jonathan O'Dea at the Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith, London. 6 September - 19 October 2007

“…You can’t be weird in a strange town / You’ll be betrayed by your accent and manners…”       Paul Weller, from Strange Town, released by The Jam, 17 March 1979

At one time, the, English, Scots, Welsh, and Irish - did Nostalgia very well. This complex concentrate of imagination and emotion was utilised, full-strength or diluted, in nearly every avenue of daily life for the better part of the twentieth century, and, however we might wish to free ourselves of it, the phrase ‘Those were the days’ still represents a well-thumbed short cut to a page in anyone’s personal lexicon. Nostalgia can be as strong a suit in the creation of self-identity as its true partner, Self Knowledge. Each is capable of creating a comfort zone within which creativity can function with some sensitivity, according to use, in visual and textual terms. None of us have to try especially hard to invoke such imagery. Evoking it is harder, for it takes rather more effort to create meaningful outcomes.

Jonathan O’Dea is presently treading that path of discovery. Resident in England since the age of twelve, O’Dea’s West of Ireland accent remains strong, and from his inner ear he feeds a still-developing personal, visual language, in which dislocation is key. Being an Irish ex-pat in the twenty-first century is to exist on a planet undreamed of by stereotypical nineteenth century Irishmen and women, and to be an Irish artist in the same era means that there is even less to fall back on by way of comparison. Nothing if not logo-centric, globalisation has prompted the reduction of so many visual bastions that anyone living in a strange town, in a strange city of today, might not only live anonymously as an individual but reduce one’s existence to little more than a presence in a physical anyplace.

What is ‘expatriate existence’ to an Irishman? Amongst myriad other sensations, the assumption might be that the remembrance of the land, the idea of it, will be different from the geographical / topographical memories taken away by the tourist. Jonathan O’Dea’s paintings suggest that his ideas may be different. It is experience that shapes our perceptions of geography. Metropolitan life doesn’t prepare us for Ireland, or anywhere similar, and vice versa. Even its unofficial soundtrack, the ‘Celtic’ folk music of the twentieth century and after, cannot be other than reflective of metropolitan existence: a yearning for the trappings of another life, however remote, however distant that life might have been, but an accurate reflection of today? To move from a rural to a metropolitan setting, to move from one country (perceived as countryside) to another requires uprooting, whether or not the experience is to be permanent. One needs to navigate in unfamiliar surroundings, and to respond to unfamiliar perceptual and visual stimuli. You cannot speak in anything but your own accent. That applies to art also.

O’Dea’s earliest works in this exhibition are the trio Changing Spaces, paintings on Hessian, executed in London, probably derived from subliminal responses to his youth in Mayo. Like the very different works that follow, the absence of any descriptive qualities is deliberate: even the presentation of light in each is imaginary, and the durability of the medium itself (dry pigment mixed with varnish) is uncertain. O’Dea says that he tries hard to work away from life – ‘disengagement from realism’ he has called it – but inevitably, and however determined his idealism, these nearly abstract paintings will be seen as landscapes by many among his audience.

Another trio, Transition, followed Changing Spaces. Out went the oil pigment, to be replaced by textured, coloured areas of corrugated card, inlaid into squares of MDF, over-painted white. Although O’Dea classes these works as urban landscapes, he has also spoken of their multi-layered qualities, and of fragmentation: both factors in his appreciation of London as an alien town. However, it’s hard to see these works as purely topographical: rather, they suggest the underlying spaces of urban life. Too clean to be decomposing, they nevertheless reveal the lathe beneath the plaster, with colour attracting or repelling. The whiter-than-white surfaces are intentionally minimalist, anti-naturalistic, inviting comparison with the variable spatial boundaries of Mondrian… but introduce Ireland or Irishness to these stark, strong contrasts and connections are much less certain.

Most recently, O’Dea has focused on issues of Irish symbolism and identity, alighting on the colour Green, the Shamrock, and in particular the tin whistle, symbols of Ireland divided and united, if ever any existed. His acid, hard-edge treatment of these subjects is arguably his most consistent, acerbic, and least ephemeral, suggesting that, in the smaller motifs, more potent statements may lie hidden from the general gaze, and that more still may be forthcoming.

As far as it goes at present, O’Dea’s work, in its various manifestations, is reflective of his position as a second generation migrant, in a land that is not wholly strange. On one level, O’Dea exercises his own brand of nostalgia, happy to eschew the detail of the West in its most literal terms. At another, he creates personal responses to a present in which the cornucopia of life-experience in London has forced him to question the validity of his own national antecedence. Can he be Irish in London? What is, what might be, a defining experience of national identity anywhere? Why is it necessary for O’Dea to ask these questions at all? Because it’s in the blood, and to deny them would be to duck what for him are the important issues ,as they have already merged, and as they will surely continue to unfold.

Julian Freeman©

July 2007