After the future

New paintings and drawings.

Weird little beasts.

They could be prehistoric or they could be post apocalyptic.

Some new life forms clinging to a volcanic vent deep in the ocean.

Covid hitching a lift on a deep space probe only to crash into a distant planet and start life all over again. I am a god and all these little creatures I’ve made out of mud and twigs and rib bones. They say to me, ‘Auuuugh... what have you done?

This body of work has come out of a residencey at Claremont College organised through Arts Tasmania. I started out trying to paint landscapes. I know that’s where the big bucks are and I like the idea of standing out on a hill in a beret but it didn’t turn out that way. My paintings are more like drawings, and my drawings are more like writing. Like the start of some new language that I don’t know how to read yet. They are new heiroglyphs and ancient emojis. Pictograms meant to warn of some toxic waste buried in the ground a zillion years ago. Lego instructions on how to build the next 1000 years, but every page is from a different set.

Tom O'Hern is a Hobart based artist whose practice spans murals, painting, animation and drawing. His work explores primitivism, masculinity and suburbia (scrawling penises on toilet walls). Tom completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours at the University of Tasmania in 2006 and was included in the 2011 Primavera at the MCA. He has shown widely in Australia and undertaken residencies in Hobart, France and China.