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"For there to be beauty, there first must be a comparison"
S. Ryder
"Time's tides will smother you"
Morrissey
For those who caught Joseph O'Connor's exhibition which opened at Bellas Gallery last New Year's Eve, they might not have noticed the above quotes slotted inconspicuously beside the front door as though they existed as a pre-texts to the artist's work. Their existence had the potential to change the status of meaning for the viewer. Their placement and the general absence of dominant textual references in the work appeared to be part of the "game plan". As such, a mood of mystery and ambiguity pervaded the work.
Truisms have a "credibility" that can be hard to refute; certainly Jenny Holzer's constructed truisms are designed to be convincing. But the reality is that absolutes are constantly being redefined (even the universal application of Newton's Third Law of Motion has been thrown into question). So when we discover that Joseph O'Connor is not about setting up absolutes - but is instead concerned with the redefinition of "stereotypes" in our culture - then the reasoning behind the placement of the quotes becomes clearer.
The exhibition itself consists of a large and brooding panel painting, a series of schoolyard photos, and three larger-than-life black and white photographic portraits (a woman, a boy and a girl) faced by three cinema chairs.
In the latter, O'Connor brings into question preconceptions set up in society that refer to "innocence", "beauty", "sexuality", through images that refuse to engage the viewer in the usual manner. Rather than the image of the "sex goddess" or the "groovy" kids of the ad world, we view three huge faces, from the comfort of