Oliver Durcan’s paintings realistically render objects, photographs and screenshots found in art settings and in popular culture. They are ‘replicas’, produced with an intentionally robotic, engineered approach and a more photographic outcome than a painterly one. His work explores the function and purpose of painting when it is used as a disguising tool to mimic and replicate. He is interested in looking at the behaviour of painting and the lifestyle of the painter who is contained within a multi-tasked, distracted contemporary culture. Recent paintings have used tromp l’oeil effects, rendered in a way that folds our perception of their three-dimensionality. The imagery in his work is often taken from the ambient background of contemporary culture, using painting (and Painting) as a means to bring it to the foreground. In Durcan’s work subjects invisible through their saturated repetition in popular culture, present themselves with the aura of the one-of-a-kind.
2018 IKO: byIKO, Subsidiary Projects, London, UK
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, UK
2017 IKO: The Worst Seats in the House, SET Capstan House, London, UK (curator)
2017 IKO & Milk: Ultra Sunrise, SET Alscot Rd, London, UK (exhibitor + curator)
2017 IKO: Blue Sky Thinking, SET Capstan House, London, UK (exhibitor + curator)
2016 Meander, Carousel Spaces, London, UK (Two-person show)
2016 Trumped, CNB Gallery, London, UK
2016 The Proof of the Pudding is in the Eating #2, Kusseneers Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
2015 RBA Rising Stars, Gallery LR, London, UK
2015 Griffin Open, Griffin Gallery, London, UK
2015 Let Them Eat Steak, CNB Gallery, London, UK
2015 Marks Bar (HIX), Old Vic Theatre, London, UK (permanent display)
2014 Roth, Grosvenor House, London, UK
2013 Horse Meat, CNB Gallery, London, UK
2013 Hix Art Award, CNB Gallery, London, UK
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)
