First it flickers and then it tips (us out of the Holocene).
Artist Geraldine O’Neill has long responded to the increasing confrontation with human engagement and relationship with the ecosystem, in particular the Anthropocene whose traces are now embedded within the geological layers of the Earth’s structure. Her new exhibition, Flicker, Flicker, responds to the escalating tension between humanity and the natural world. Her work speaks directly to the Anthropocene, our current epoch, where human presence is inscribed into the geological fabric of the earth.
For O’Neill, this presence is made vivid through the everyday. Domestic references, images of her children, and items from her studio mingle with art-historical fragments, still birds, and household detritus. These layered references move between the personal and the collective, situating the intimacy of home life within broader cultural and ecological frameworks.
O’Neill’s distinctive painterly approach, grounded in conceptual rigour and technical mastery, reanimates these instances across time and memory. Through her colour-saturated virtuosity, she creates surfaces that are at once sobering and luminous, reflecting on the fragility of our world while offering a space of haunting beauty.
The exhibition runs from October 16th – November 15th 2025 at Kevin Kavanagh Gallery.
Feature Image: Geraldine O’Neill, Mise en scène, 2025
