On Sinking at Tony Wight

On Sinking is a continuation of Robyn O’Neil’s vision of an apocalyptic future. Her past works show men fighting for their lives; whether it is drones on rafts with a threatening sky above, or hanging by a wire above a tumultuous sea. Her newest work seems to suggest that despite their best efforts, the end has come. Where O’Neil used to render figures against dominant backdrops, there is nothing left but nature and a sole survivor.
The new drawings do not necessarily tell a linear narrative, but rather work together to create a mood. O’Neil’s modes of representation vary from straightforward in Quiet and A Song of So Many Beginnings, to poetic in The Dismantled Ship and Turbulent Beliefs. The tension between the two types of work is periodically interrupted by images of the back of a man’s head, like in Turn to the Left. While some scenes sprawl across the paper, others exist as floating images. The variety within the body of work prevents it from reading as a beginning to end story, and instead places emphasis on individual works that would have otherwise been means to an end.
While the works at times seem disparate from one another, a few motifs unite them not only within On Sinking, but also with O’Neil’s entire body of work. In her signature graphite on paper, she continues to render sky and sea in exaggerated sweeps that are simultaneously ominous and peaceful. She takes advantage of the dark material and white paper by varying which represents sky and foreground; nothing is safe, because the world can easily exist inverted. Certain shapes are repeated throughout the show. For example, the shape of a cloud over a man’s head in Occurrence is used for the shape of an overturned boat in The Dismantled Ship. The subtle repetitions throughout the show pull the pieces together in a unified vision, albeit of the end of the world.