Jen O’Connor Art

Traditional Mediums

The Smelt Series created on Lasqueti Island B.C.

Post-Dust Art the first body of work where waste was combined with painting.

Artist Statement

My practice can be described as (but not limited to) an analogy to alchemy in that I am seeking to derive the redemptive substance from base matter, this is why I often use waste as a medium. While I also use paints, their value becomes redundant when contrasted with imbedded narratives of the discarded materials of our consumer society. I like to use video documentation in part to preserve works that are too large to store. The other utility of video is to emphasize the transformation taking place which I would describe as the materialization of spirit through spiritualizing matter. In this sense the video preserves the metaphysical substrate of the work, simulacra; an echo of the ephemeral and transitory experience a viewer has through their perception of artwork in physical space. Meanwhile the physical art object itself often disintegrates back into trash which can in some cases take a lifetime to break down. This process is reflective of the life of the commodity, wherein an assemblage of base matter is brought together to produce a consumptive experience and leaves behind its shell of base matter once more in the form of garbage. When it comes to process I try to work as much as possible through intuition. I try to work beyond the constraints of convention with an emphasis on the experimental. I approach my working materials with a non-discriminatory openness to create a diverse amalgamation of medium and matter where the whole is greater than the individual parts.

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