Oliver Durcan’s paintings are realistic renders of objects, photographs, and screenshots found in art and popular culture. They are replicas, produced with an intentionally robotic approach and with a more photographic outcome than a painterly one. His work explores the function and purpose of painting and the function of the painter within contemporary multi-tasked, distracted society. The imagery in his work draws from the ambient backgrounds of contemporary culture, invisible through their saturated repetition, using painting as a means to bring them back into focus. Is this its new function?
Ikea-like instructions for assembling and painting your own painting, disassembling it, and reassembling it again.
Taken from the Paramount Pictures mountain range, the Exit Entry series exemplifies the branding of place and the consumption of experience. Referencing traditional landscape painting and its inherent function of presenting a location, the Paramount mountain range is a computer-generated image. It is a ‘place’ in digital space and its physicality goes no further than the backlit display or projector, appearing as part of a recognisable sequence in the seconds before watching a film. The Exit Entry series transfers the virtual image into physical form. rendered as an oil painting on aluminium. Stimulating yet derailing our recognition of the image, the dimensions of the work mimic the size of an iPad Pro display.
2018 IKO: byIKO, Subsidiary Projects, London
2018 IKO & Is This It?: If a Tree Falls in a Forest and No One is There to Instagram it, Does it Really Happen?, Online writing project (curator)
2017 The Fear is Back, Chisenhale Art Place, London
2017 IKO & Milk: Ultra Sunrise, SET Alscot Rd, London
2017 IKO: Blue Sky Thinking, SET Capstan House, London
2016 Meander, Carousel Spaces, London
2016 Trumped, CNB Gallery, London
2016 The Proof of the Pudding is in the Eating #2, Kusseneers Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
2015 RBA Rising Stars, Gallery LR, London
2015 Griffin Open, Griffin Gallery, London
2015 Let Them Eat Steak, CNB Gallery, London
2015 Marks Bar (HIX), Old Vic Theatre, London (permanent display)
2014 Roth, Grosvenor House, London
2013 Horse Meat, CNB Gallery, London
2013 Hix Art Award, CNB Gallery, London
2017 ITS KIND OF HARD TO EXPLAIN (IKO) - Founding member of curatorial non-profit exhibition collective
2017 Research Project in Museum Conservation
2017 THE WILD CRITS - Artist crit programme at SET, Capstan House, London
Winsor & Newton Painting Prize (2015 Shortlisted, 2012 First Prize)
RBA Rome Scholarship, (2015 Shortlisted)
Hix Art Award (2013 Shortlisted)
UEL Arts & Digital Industries, Tutors Choice Award (2013)
