Vanessa O’Reilly

b. 1972, Mexico

In Vanessa O’Reilly’s wall drawings, isolated images referenced from an archive of moving images are seen in repetition. These images can vary in scale and location without any modification to their conceptual ambition. Through them we can understand that there is no longer any relevance to a postmodernism that heralds rupture in a moving image made still, or an animated still image. For we have come to comprehend the nature of the reproduced through a culture littered with the rephrased, stolen and derived. By representing scenes through impressionistic graphite drawing – in this case a sleeping woman and a fenced train track – a relationship to an optical response is formed as we move in and out of range to see whole or part of each work. O’Reilly is undoubtedly an optimist who demands a reaction to her individualistic affiliation to the world at large. She is also an observer whose work is often connected to making a sense of place. Like a graffiti artist, an intrinsic quality to the work is a nomadic sensibility, an understanding of the shifting nature of possibilities of display as well as the paradigms that surround and create each and every opportunity.

— Lisa Panting, London 2002

(Text: heroes + holies catalogue, 2002)