Finn Lafcadio O´Hanlon

The works of the young British artist are best read as ´psychogeographic maps´, tracing the passage of an individual psyche through a series of alternative realities that are often in conflict. Densely drawn, determinedly monochromatic and richly textured, with obscure, syncretic mythological and pop cultural references, negative space is eschewed with almost obsessive determination in order to amplify a dystopian claustrophobia.

Born in Brighton, England to an Australian father and an Hawaiian-Cherokee mother, Finn Lafcadio O´Hanlon grew up among creative, nomadic types in the UK, then Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Los Angeles, before returning as a teenager to Sydney´s northern beaches. He is a grandson of the late best-selling novelist, Morris West. Finn´s formal art training ended in high school when his teacher took exception to his various forays into conceptual art – including a specimen bottle filled with his own urine housed in an engraved perspex box – and threw him out of her class. He taught himself photography instead, and his snapshots of the hard partying and self-negating lifestyles of the surfers and skaters who were his peers gained the attention of the highly regarded French photography and visual arts journals. Having spent a year in France, Finn moved to Berlin at the beginning of 2013, where he established a studio to work in a variety of media including ink and collage on paper, photography, stone engraving, and site-specific sculpture.

Artist Info