EXHIBITIONS
2008 The Scotland-Russia Forum, 9 South College St., Edinburgh, Scotland
2006 Artist’s Kew. The Royal Botanical Society, Kew Gardens, London.
2006 Artists’ Kew. Messum’s Gallery, Cork Street and Kew Gardens.
2005 Annual Exhibition, Prince Charles’ Drawing School, London
2005 Exhibition of Contemporary Russian Artists, Solana Art Gallery, GazProm House, Kingston, London
2004 Annual Exhibition. The Royal Society of Portrait Painters. The Mall Gallery, London.
2002 The View Exhibition. Waterstone’s Bookshop, Picadilly, London.
2001 Summer Exhibition. John Martin Gallery, Albermarle St., Picadilly, London.
2000 Solo Exhibition. Lauderdale House, Highgate, London.
1999 Group Exhibition. The Association of Russian Artists, London
1998 Solo Exhibition. The International Cultural Centre, "Dom Druzhby". Petersburg. Russia.
1989-1997 Selected by the Petersburg Union of Artists to exhibit at their annual Summer and Winter Shows. Manezh Exhibition Hall, St. Petersburg.
1992 Group Exhibition, 1020 Gallery. Vienna. Austria.
1991 "Apteka Poel" Merz Gallery London. England.
1990 Group Exhibition. Concordia Foundation. London. England.
1988 “Drawings and Paintings by outstanding young artists from the Leningrad Academy of Art”. The New York Academy of Art. U.S.A.
1988 First Exhibition of Independent Artists. St. Petersburg. Russia.
1988 Exhibition. "In Celebration of 2,000 years of Christianity in Russia". The Yelaginsky Palace. St. Petersburg. Russia.
BACK DROP PAINTING, MURALS AND COMMISSIONS
2006 Still life commission for a collector in Germany.
2002 Painting commissions in the style of Velasquez and the impressionists for a private home.
2000 Family Portrait set in 18th century Venice. (Oil, 250cm x 100cm)
1999 Roman style mural around plunge pool, Virgina Waters, Surrey, U.K.
1999 Italian style landscapes and Trompes l’oeil for Entrance Hall, Virginia Waters, Surrey, U.K.
1999 Ceiling and wall detail for living room, Notting Hill, London, U.K.
1999 Two large paintings for an office interior, LukTranshipping, Piccadilly, London, U.K. (Tempera, 230 x 100cm).
1999 Italian style landscape and Trompe l’oeil for Hallway, Kensington, London, U.K.
1998 Family portrait. (Tempera, 110 x 100cm)
1996 Mariinsky (Kirov) Theatre, St. Petersburg. Copy of early 20th century Sleeping Beauty backdrop. As part of a team of 3 we painted 1,000 m of back drop in 3 months.
1995 Maly Theatre, St. Petersburg. Back drops for the Nutcracker and Swan Lake.
PUBLICATIONS
2006 “Artists’ Kew”, published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, London, Surrey, TW9 3AB, U.K. British Library ISBN No. 1842461435
2005 “A Collection of Modern Russian Art”, published by Solana Fine Art Limited and Gazprom Marketing and Trading Ltd., 60 Marina Place, Hampton Wick, Kingston upon Thames, London KT1 4BH.
2002 “The View. An Exhibition about Richmond Hill”, published by the Asgill House Trust in Association with the London Arcadia Partnership, Asgill House, Richmond, London, Surrey, TW9 1PQ, U.K.
1995 “Academic Drawings”, The Russian Academy of Arts, the St. Petersburg I.E. Repin State Academic Institute of painting, sculpture and Architecture, published by “Izobrazitelnoye Isskustvo”, Moscow.
Freeing the Subject Within: a reading of the paintings of Olga Geoghegan.
Half-seen figures emerge from colour-drenched density; ambiguous gestures, singing mouths, slim limbed boys… but if you ask Olga Geoghegan about the subject of her paintings she’ll dismiss you with a wave of her hand and an ironic grin “you want literature? Go and read a book. Paintings aren’t about anything, they’re just paintings”.
On one level, she’s right. Olga’s paintings are about painting; about its very substance, about the process, and even about paint itself. The four walls of the canvas enclose a world sustained by its own integrity, with its unique language and reference points; her complex overlaying of rich colours and textures draw one into a sensual world of abstract beauty where the activities of the figures seem to matter little. Here one feels the hand and eye of an artist for whom, schooled by masters since she was a child, composition and the manipulation of colour have become close to pure instinct.
But there is another level; Olga’s paintings do have a subject, a subject that runs through the very bone marrow of human consciousness, and is as old, and as contemporary, as humanity itself. Her subject is of exile and its effects of alienation, and dislocation.
That exile and alienation should have become the theme of Olga’s work is no surprise. Olga was born in Ukhta, a town built by Stalin in Russia’s bleak north. Its purpose was to be the administrative centre for the northern prison zone. The town’s occupants were those released from the camp but who were forbidden to return to life in Moscow or Leningrad. These political prisoners lingered in enforced perpetual exile in Ukhta. They shared the town with those who had been drafted in by the state to carry out the oft unsavoury tasks required by the prison industry. However, when Olga was ten her prodigious talent led to her being accepted at the special artist’s boarding school in Leningrad. It was thousands of kilometres from Ukhta and from home; she remembers it feeling like an exile.
Young Olga did well in her new Leningrad life. She became a graduate of the highly prestigious Leningrad Academy. She graduated at a time when students leaving the Academy found themselves in a world which was no longer readable. If alienation is a disease whose contemporary forms are particularly virulent, post-Soviet Russia merits its own chapter in the casebook. Since the collapse, nearly 20 years ago, of the social experiment that had defined it, the Russian collective consciousness has been traumatised. Russia has become divorced from its own history. Russians now try to make sense of their own lives privately and tentatively. The world offers them few clues and no certainty. In the mafia dominated 1990s many Russian artists left their country. Olga was one of them. She now lives in London where she is married. Her two sons provide the inspiration for the children in her paintings.
Olga’s characters are archetypes; mothers, sons, brides, matriarchs and maidens. They play out allegorical roles variously representing the seasons, celebrating ancient rites, performing shamanic dances or trumpeting on enormous, archaic horns. Her colours imply vivacity and joy but there is, throughout her work, an unsettling ambivalence; Olga’s use of light can lend an eerie quality of nightmare to her scenes of apparent celebration. One asks if her dancers are really dancing or perhaps, like Stravinsky’s heroine, dying? Is the girl in “Lullaby” singing to a sleeping child or howling at a funeral wake?
The macabre does not define Olga’s work. The series “Children of the Fisherman” celebrates the beauty of life itself. The cool unselfconscious bodies of young boys fishing at the water’s edge are realised in a thick impasto. This technique, along with the colours and theme, puts one in mind of antique frescos. But in this scene of calm beauty the children do not relate to one another; each is absorbed in his own world, reflective and alone. Olga’s allegorical “seasons” are Russian women, each depicted in rich individual colour and each echoing historical depictions of women in art. There are mingled echoes of Rococo and of the portraits of Vermeer and Velazquez. The layers of paint reflect the layers of inference. How seductive an idea to paint the seasons, how delightful it is for us to compare the colours, moods and contrasts in each of the four paintings. We are transported to childhood captivation by rich illustrations in large old books on a rainy day. Yet these paintings suggest also the loneliness of portraiture with the single person isolated in their own distinct little frame.
The intensely political environment of her formative years did nothing to stint Olga’s young imagination which raced freely in another realm. Russianness and all its forms became her passion. It supplied a rich stock of material to glean from: its high culture and folklore; the heroes of literature; fairy stories; the aesthetic of rustic life: the steam baths: food, tea, music and songs. Her other passion was of course art and the history of art. So when this very Russian artist who has found herself so many miles from home paints, almost despite herself, there emerge on her canvases myriad characters. They scramble through the layers of paint like ghosts until they find a means to be seen. The Russian maidens meet the howling infants. Misshaped goddesses mingle among the shamanic sorcerers. The wild musicians try to catch the ear of the pensive fisher boys.
Michelangelo said that what he did was to cut away the unnecessary to find the form waiting inside the stone. Perhaps this is what the creative process is for Olga Geoghegan, She pushes paint around a canvas to reveal the subject trapped within.
Elizabeth Simoneau, International Association of Art Critics (AIS AICA), Burgundy, France 2008