exhibition

Grace O'Conner: The Waiting

Grace O'Conner

19.Oct.07 - 17.Nov.07
Wed-Sat 10-5

Paul Stolper
78 Luke St
London EC2A 4PY
020 7739 6504
info@paulstolper.com
www.paulstolper.com
Tube Old Street, Liverpool Street, Shoreditch / Hoxton

Paul Stolper is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings and drawings by Grace O’Connor. ‘The Waiting’ is a new group of paintings by Grace O’Connor: ‘The Waiting’ in this body of work refers to waiting for excitement, waiting for love, waiting to be noticed. Specifically, the girls portrayed in the paintings are groupies.

Grace O’Connor spent her teenage years from the ages of thirteen to nineteen waiting for bands, outside of venues and outside of the very private backstage areas that only the groups have access to. This collection of paintings, drawings and watercolours is a document of that time. Coming from a small town on the East coast of the United States, Waterbury, Connecticut and searching for a social life, Grace painted and drew portraits of bands she loved, paintings to give to each band she and her sister wanted to meet, or gain access to a concert otherwise unavailable to the under 18’s. This was also her baptism to discovering life backstage and the girls who hung out there. The paintings focus on the groupies and not the bands, and therefore there is a concentration somehow on the innocence of the girls as opposed to the clichéd visual excesses of the bands.

There was a stillness and a quiet anxiety about waiting for rock stars, an almost religious zeal to perhaps get a chance to breathe the same air or to, in a sense, touch the hem of the garment as the beloved passes by. And for those who got backstage or invited onto the tour bus, the possibility of much more. The era Grace paints is post punk, at a time when American bands crossed the country in enormous tour buses playing huge bland domes, bringing for one night excitement and a sense of danger to teenage girls from endless small American towns looking for something to do on a Saturday night.

Although not a groupie in the traditional sense, Grace observed the girls who were there for more than just the music. There was curiously little or no camaraderie among the girls looking to get the attention of the band. To a great degree every concert these girls attended was a competition with only winners or losers; you either got backstage or you didn’t. These paintings capture the longing and desire but often hopelessness of this searching.
For more information and images please contact Louise Foster or Liz Glassenbury at the gallery.