NEVEN’s presentation at SWAB looks to material cultures as ways of re-imagining tradition, reaction and futurity. On the occasion of the fair, NEVEN co-curated a shared booth with SPLIT, who showcased work by Leon Scott-Engel and Angela Leyva, alongside O'Farrell and O'Carolan.

Jen O’Farrell’s textural wall-based works draw from material research and ethnographic observations conducted on a trip across the stratovolcanic archipelago of Japan. Exploring forest eco-regions as regenerative, spiritual and ancient terrains, she works with organic materials that align with renewable energy or bio-material based research. Bamboo charcoal pigment (or biochar) is used to render shadowy leaf patterns on reflective plexiglass. Biochar regenerates soil from burnt bamboo and is a prominent renewable energy source used in power plants and construction sites in Japan. The elemental textures and surfaces of the artworks furthermore echo the temporalities of forest ecosystems – mud, dew, woodland, night, day, humidity, light – fragments of explorations and interconnectedness with the landscape.

O’Farrell also references Japanese architectural design, notable for its unique philosophical approach to blending indoor and outdoor spaces and creating an intimacy to nature. Custom wooden frames reference the interlocking laths of wood or bamboo used traditionally in shoji screens. The wood used in the frames has been charred in the manner of shou sugi ban, a traditional wood preservation technique used in Japanese carpentry that prolongs the life of the wood. 

Exploring geo-localised ideas of sustainability and preservation, site-specific materials and architectural vernacular, the works follow in the legacy of the Mono-ha movement, whose proponents used unrefined, organic materials in reaction to the rapid industrialisation of Japan. 

Fern O’Carolan’s textile pieces, meanwhile, reclaim items of 19th-century womenswear and motifs of traditional Western femininity in materials including prayer cushions, velvet, leather and Catholic hangings to process ideas of coming-of-age, innocence, sexuality, interrogating imagery and material’s potential to historically both empower and constrict femininity.  The 19th century coin purses and boned corset allude to status and desirability, and are further adorned with ephemera including totemic charms, jewellery, contemporary keyrings, ribbons, a Catholic hanging, and pocket prison photographs of pin-ups from the 1950s and 60s. In juxtaposing historical markers of feminine desirability with indexes of conservativism, O’Carolan exposes the contradictory standards, expectations and fallacies imposed on womanhood. The wall-based works are accompanied by a soft sculpture of a daisy chain in leather and metal, based on a sewing pattern from the 1960s, which further complexifies notions of “soft” and “hard”, innocence and knowingness, and the material and visual cultures that surround these.

FERN O'CAROLAN (b. 1991, Dublin) is an Irish artist living and working in London whose work explores themes of femininity, innocence, contamination, sexuality, and their impasse with religious institutions, drawing from her experiences growing up in the Irish Catholic Church. She collects imagery from vintage magazines, early Internet blogs and her own childhood, which she enlarges and prints onto textiles which are hand-sewn into velvet-backed wall-based works. With a visual lexicon interrogating the breadth and nuances of femininity within popular and consumer culture, O’Carolan explores imagery’s potential to both empower and exclude, as well as reinforce or disrupt systems of power and belief. 

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JEN O'FARRELL (b. Liverpool, 1990) makes abstract works that formally evoke the topographies of industrial inner-city landscapes, remote terrains and geological formations, using materials sourced directly from both urban and natural sites. By embedding locality into the very fabric of the work, O’Farrell’s practice pays poetic homage to these environments while also reflecting on the specific geopolitical contexts and material histories of these sites.