Artists Statement by Seamus O’Rourke

These works probe the alarming continuum of art and its accompanying destruction with omnipresent violence found in societies across the ages, reflected in the loss of cultural artefacts.

I engage with the space in each drawing between what is visible and what is absent.

Martin Heidegger’s enigmatic postwar treatise ‘Sous rature’ (1956) remains a consistent focus.

(‘Under Erasure’)a seminal tract, pared to delineation, remains fugitive not unlike Orwellian and Kafkaesque motifs, explored in mannerist silhouettes.

Drawing is emphasised as an intervention from which a ‘Combustible’ emerges that articulates the constant ominous cycle from negation to final afterimage.