Jack O'Brien

Jack O’Brien’s practice bridges connections and examines the relationships between the built environment, materiality, and aesthetics that exist on the fringes. Within his work, he makes use of both industrially produced materials and materials traditionally associated with ‘craft’, alongside objects that hold personal resonance and found objects. His typical materials range from steel, wood, dried flowers, socks, printed paper, horse-hair braid, rubber, concrete, and latex. Influenced by industrial production, fashion, architecture, and image-making, his sculptures are deeply emotive and serve as responses to consumption, capitalism, and the commodification of desire, along with their political and ideological histories. Through physically distorting his materials, such as by elongating, twisting, and folding, O’Brien explores how meaning can be altered and re-programmed. His recent practice has approached the commodification of queerness and queer aesthetics as well as the notions of taboo and fetish associated with the queer community. Through this, he intertwines decorative and ornamental styles with the connections between whiteness, masculinity, and fascism within gay culture. ...

Ginny on Frederick is a former shop unit opposite Smithfield Meat Market in Clerkenwell, east London, that’s capable of shapeshifting. ‘Frederick’ refers to founder and curator Freddie Powell’s original space on Frederick Terrace in Hackney, which closed during the first pandemic lockdown in 2020; ‘Ginny’ is his mum’s name. The anachronistic signage above the door of the current space reads ‘Sunset Sandwich Bar II: Hot & Cold Food to Take Away’, exemplifying what makes the gallery so compelling: it’s idiosyncratic, hiding in plain sight. Ginny on Frederick’s focus on young artists offers a sense of promise and something often missing in the capital: support at a local level for artists. ...