Jen O’Farrell
No Longer Endless
@ Neven
We might very well be on a stretch of bad road. I can’t help but think of something George Carlin once said, ‘the planet is going to shake us off like a bad case of fleas’. Perhaps it’s not so bad, this idea that despite an overwhelming reach, humans could be a short lived, inconsequential chapter in Earth’s history. Jen O’Farrell illustrates the pervasive influence we wield, and the synchronous derangements shaping the material environments around us.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and everything in between.
No Longer Endless vastly differs aesthetically to the previous show, Hoping held at Neven gallery, but connective tendrils and overarching themes reverberate between the two. Allusions to Capitalism as a bitch that doesn’t quit, market expansionism and the unrelenting creep of global commerce under neoliberal ideology are undercurrents, weaving a narrative that questions our impact on the world and the fleeting nature of our existence. Where Bransfield was ceaseless, absurd consumption and glamorous disposability, O’Farrell is the raw beginnings and left over sludge that bookends him.
Born in 90s Liverpool and currently residing and practicing in London, O'Farrell is undoubtedly familiar with navigating the shifts and turnovers within commercial landscapes. The marrow of her works is steeped in urban decay and decline. Among grime and rusted countenances, amidst economic shifts and political convulsions, the themes of disposability and the precarious nature of industrial mindsets from bygone eras unfold as inherent vulnerabilities in her works.
We think about “what once was”, invariably leading to “what now?”. Back up, reverse course, the question becomes “from where did it come?”
The legacy of industrialisation, the colonist mindset of entitlement. The narrative of history’s impact seeps out as a spectral echo.
Navigating surface terrains from remote to urban, O’Farrell digs and scrapes for the essence of our existence in the intricacies of resource procurement and reclamation. Lust for Domination. Moments of Power, Slick Tenacity. Her works carry the weight as a testament to the human dichotomy of reckless plunder and solemn preservation.
It manifests in the salt and sand from far away coastlines and deserts, in the foraged soil and clay, in the harvested bio-resin of the Algarrobo tree.
Elements and materials once confined to specific locales embarking on transcontinental journeys along coordinated supply chains. Stringing together the threads of passage, O’Farrell's works explore the traces we leave. Maximal Impact. Convergence Zone. Ground and grime, raw mineral and waste matter percolate. In the dirt of urban construction, in the spray paint and varnish on corroded iron signs, in the dulled surfaces of once-pristine plexiglass and perspex, in the residual ash, O’Farrell finds her mediums.
We reckon with the fallout. The currents of globalisation carrying transmutations of commodities and their life cycles beyond. This is the matter encompassing multitudes and finites, plenty and scarcity. Extracted and subsumed back into the crust of the earth, and the human hands that orchestrate such. Continual Interference.
In this way, O’Farrell is an alchemist, infusing vitality into the dormant substances. Conducting their transformation like a maestro, the master of metamorphosis. This is more than lifeless land art, the movement of inert substances from point A to point B,C,D…. In the chemistry of material interactions, the chemistry of creation unfolds. The artist lets go and elemental forces rule this process; taking over, guiding the stream, coursing through like a dynamic force. Blend, mix, merge, amalgamate - an expressive resonance of the materials.
To Remain.
No Longer Endless.
Our grasp is tenuous over Mother Nature; in the end, she always wins out. In the gallery the works hang like memorial plaques in a mausoleum, the gestures and marks symbolic epitaphs forging a connection between the organic and the synthetic, the ancient and the contemporary.
We are intertwined with the very ground beneath our feet, a connection innate and universal. The subtle embrace of the land, though often unnoticed, shapes our existence. The acquaintance of materials that runs deep, and the framework of our lives man-made. Terrain and structures are a woven cloak that cocoons us. Bound to the essence of our surroundings, we fare through the ever-changing mosaic of existence.
Jen O’Farrell
No Longer Endless
On until 16 December
Neven
353 Cambridge Heath Rd, E2 9RA