Finn Lafcadio O'Hanlon

"There is an immediate sense of the weird and medieval in Finn O’Hanlon’s drawings. References to tattoo and ‘lowbrow’ outsider art and the intricate sci-fi/fantasy of French bandes dessinées are apparent but they are incidental to a visual structure clearly derived from Gothic and early Renaissance religious art. These are works that are best read as psychogeographic maps, tracing the passage of an individual psyche through a series of alternative realities in conflict. Densely drawn, in fine detail, negative space is eschewed with almost obsessive determination in order to amplify a dystopian claustrophobia. Like their medieval precedents – and much more recent works such as Grayson Perry’s monochromatic 'Map Of Nowhere' and 'Map Of An Englishman' – layers of symbolism and narrative weave the surreal (and spiritual) with the intimately personal, social and political. The viewer is left to intepret this complex territory on their own terms (as Alfred Korzybski reminds us, the map is not the territory). In Finn’s art, the territory is emphatically a re-connection of traditional forms and techniques ­with contemporary qualms and urban iconography. It manages to be, at once, emphatically of this time – uneasy, post-technological – and hauntingly ancient."

– 'Here We Are' exhibition notes, Mick Gallery, Sydney, 2011