CONOR O’BRIEN

Conor O’Brien’s Photographs 2003 – 2011 (as the name suggests) surveys eight years of the Melbourne-based photographer’s work, and represents his first major survey exhibition. Spread across several rooms at the Australian Centre for Photography, Photographs offers a carefully selected glimpse into the career of O’Brien, who has exhibited regularly since his first solo show in Vancouver in 2003. The collection spans numerous environments, subjects and tones, giving the audience a satisfying insight into O’Brien’s artistic maturation from an almost anti-aesthetic to a more structured and formal framing. What remains common through the images, however, is the artist’s ongoing concern with isolation, nostalgia and a vague sense of anxiety. Perhaps the most striking element of the show is its total absence of subjects’ faces. O’Brien’s figures are turned away, always moving towards the horizon and obscured by hair, blankets and hands. This evasive and understated aesthetic pervades the show, giving it a sense of distance that somehow serves to draw us further into the image as we search for insight into the oblique figures. Photographs is a wonderful collection – expressive of an artistic journey, subtly evocative, and always drawing you further into its images, searching for missing clues.

Until Feb 5, Australian Centre of Photography, 257 Oxford St, Paddington, 9332 1455, acp.org.au