interviewed by Margo McClintock
Margo McClintock I find there is a seductive quality in your work which derives from a strong formalist aesthetic, associated with late modernism. In your recent show at Bellas gallery, as openers, you had photographs of chairs hung in two rows, very cool, very elegant. Those opening pieces could have been fugitives from the foyer of an architect's office.
Joseph O'Connor I think I am a modernist. I believe very much in the principles of basic design, in classicism, in striving for perfection. But I think there is something that minimalism and formalism didn't do, that perhaps it had the power to, and that was to provide some kind of social commentary. It was a very beautiful, a very elegant movement, but it was basically just about art, not art and society. With regard to the chairs, those photographs can be seen purely as a celebration of form, but my use of chairs is about taking a position. You take a position from a chair. We all have a position, and it's that position which becomes important in relation to reading the other work, or indeed any work. That's why I hung those photographs there, as the first images you see.
Margo McClintock Do you think you're seduced by a modernist aesthetic, or do you use it as a strategy?
Joseph O'Connor I use it on the one hand as a strategy, and on the other hand as an acknowledgment. It becomes more like a pastiche than an appropriation. I use it as a strategy because I feel it is successful.
Margo McClintock And one you derive great pleasure from yourself.
Joseph O'Connor Certainly. I think it's a timeless form... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline