Liz

Utilising special photography, surrealism of the mundane, the kinetics of the action painters, her highly ambitious work is a very personal reflection of journey to adulthood.

“(Art) began as a very therapeutic and meditative process for me.” Originally, O’Brien drew and painted, inspired by realism, tattoo design, watercolour stipplings...” but found her practice taking a 180 since studying an Advanced Diploma of Visual Arts at Newcastle Art School. “One night I was doing a portrait, painting every last individual hair, in some parts of the painting to get such minute details. Now I’ve completely changed, I’ve got sick of being so pedantic and such a perfectionist about that kind of work.”

Before starting her studies at Newcastle Art School, O’Brien was ‘very set in her ways’ about what she allowed herself to create and why. “When I first started doing the Diploma, we had our set subjects and photography was one of them, and I thought, ‘I’ll do it because I have to’. Now three years later, it’s all I want to do”, she laughs. “Special photography has become more important for me to really express ideas in my work.”

O’Brien had planned to replace her working title of Birth Marks, but it’s significance became more apparent as the work coalesced. “I feel people are often marked and have some parts of their futures determined at birth – gender, class, race, the country and society they live in. It is about a sense of feeling as though one’s past, and even present life, is forever going to catch up with them and limit them despite their efforts to break free of such things.” She hopes the exhibition to examine one’s place within society, the world… really stopping and thinking, ‘Where am I going in life? Is it what I want, or have I been conditioned and told what I want? Y’know… is it really personally fulfilling, is there really substance in this?’.

O’Brien admits she feels ‘somewhat limited’ and has more fears and concerns in life just because of her gender. “That’s one of my birthmarks, being born female. There’s limitations in terms of personal safety, career progression, healthcare, bodily autonomy, social pressures on how to even dress and look, it’s an ongoing list and I’m just damn well glad that I haven’t had to live through how much worse it was 50+ years ago. But I’m still aggravated that gender inequality still exists, for ALL genders, not just women. It’s ridiculous.”

Using herself as the subject in Birth Marks has been a “cathartic process… similar to the action painters, where it’s all about the physical labour that goes into creating the work, and how that expresses the thoughts and emotions of the artists.”

She’s not fazed by directing herself in front of the camera eye, “It’s a lot of trial and error, getting in frame, the right lighting, marking out the frames. I don’t get overly concerned about having very specific images come out.”

O’Brien is incredibly self aware and acutely present in her creative process. O’Brien references two classic artworks that hint at her ambitious ‘surrealist action photography’, Rene Magritte’s The Son of Man, ‘a standout... taking every day images… making it uncomfortable to look at, very unsettling’ and action painter Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles, ‘a lot of paint splattered and splashed... on an immense scale, all encompassing’.

The crucible to O’Brien’s special photography work is experimenting in the darkroom. Her innate attention to detail shows her absolution to recreate ‘happy accidents’ she might stumble across in the darkroom working with analogue processes, for example, liquid emulsion. “Liquid light will be a main part of my exhibition. THAT took a while to get right, a lot of happy accidents. Very finicky, light sensitive. Because it’s not printed photo paper, you’ve got to make sure it’s adhered right to the surfaces. You’ve got to be very disciplined with keeping temperatures and timing everything, all those little details.”

“Detached from this instantly satisfying digital process”, O’Brien’s dark room practice has made her stop and focus. “You really have to work for the result. Working with expired film, you only get 36 shots on this roll… and you start to think, is THIS THE shot I want to take? I like the idea of taking the time to go through the process… The photography and the editing is a process within itself.”

Despite oscillating between a number of creative arts practises pre-study, Birth Marks mostly comprises O’Brien’s ‘major work project for her Diploma’. “I think what really made me decide on these works - is that they are the works I keep coming back to… the styles that I keep obsessively practising… there is an innate knowing this is the best work. So much experimenting and learning that has gone into creating these works, I’ve put so many hours and hours of work - I’m really proud in showing them.”

Birth Marks, the debut exhibition of Liz O’Brien, showing 6 –16 September at The Creative Incubator, Clyde St, Hamilton South.

Instagram: goddamnit_liz