Dermot O’Brien (Not Only) But Also is one of the strongest shows I’ve seen in London for quite some time. O’Brien is an Irish artist who has chased rainbows, captured dust, blacked out the light, and even cast bullets from human bone. He is an alchemist in the truest sense – transforming the ordinary into the uncanny, and the poetic into something quietly volatile. His work can be playful and weighty, beautiful and unsettling, fragile and defiant, often all at once.
The gallery is filled with seemingly disparate works, delicate sculptures, cryptic text pieces, found objects, and minimal drawings, yet everything seems to have a shared sense of purpose. There’s an obsession with materials and transformation, but also a surprising calm. It’s a show that rewards quiet attention: the longer you spend with it, the more it reveals.
Many of his text pieces are featured in this exhibition and are placed throughout the Georgian architecture of the gallery. One beautiful, mirrored piece, Spiegel im Spiegel (pictured), is from the German expression, which literally means “mirror in a mirror”. The text is not visible when looking at your own reflection head-on, but becomes so when seen at an angle. Like many of his works, it deals with repetition, perception of self, infinity and reflection.
Another text piece, made from coloured earplugs, Uberbewertet, comes from a Joseph Beuys criticism of Marcel Duchamp. It is very much the MO of O’Brien, taking familiar everyday objects and drawing out their poetic potential in a way that is both playful and insightful.
For O’Brien, text is as malleable as metal or pigment. Words are materials to be melted down, re-forged, erased, or disguised. Meaning, for him, is never fixed, and language becomes both subject and medium.
He is, without question, one of the most intriguing artists working today, though not one who has yet received the recognition he deserves. This exhibition at Domo Baal helps to address that gap, offering a focused look at an artist whose ideas are both complex and important.
Those who frequent art gallery openings will recognise him, with an ever-present notebook on hand, quietly observing, making notes in his spidery handwriting or tracing delicate pencil lines that seem to hover on the page.
Some of these notebooks are shown here for the first time. They are exquisite: part diary, part laboratory, part séance. Their pages, full of fragments of text, abstract marks, and near-invisible drawings, form a kind of visual language. Some evolve into larger works (you can trace those connections at this exhibition), others remain suspended as thoughts, sketches of ideas, or possible future work.
He collects ideas the way others collect objects, intuitively, obsessively, without order (as far as I can see). Dust, bone, graphite, light, words, and silence all find their place in his vocabulary. In O’Brien’s hands, even nothingness feels charged with potential.
If you come to this exhibition seeking clarity, explanation, or rationality, you won’t find it, and that’s why I love O’Brien’s work; it befuddles me. But what you will find is a show that invites slow looking, open interpretation, and trust in the poetic logic that binds one piece to another.
Thoughtfully curated and immaculately installed, this exhibition feels less like a collection of artworks than an atmosphere, a world unto itself… O’Brien’s world.
For those who have followed his practice over the years, this feels like a long-overdue recognition. For those encountering him for the first time, it’s a revelation. Either way, it’s a privilege to spend time in O’Brien’s world – even for a short while.
The show is presented concurrently across both Domo Baal and Tension Fine Art, a rare and significant cross–gallery partnership in London’s independent art scene. Both galleries, while distinct in programme, share a commitment to artists working with conceptual rigour and material exploration. O’Brien’s practice bridges these approaches, making him an ideal subject for a dual exhibition.
Having not seen his work in London for a while, we now have two shows running at the same time! Catch them while you can!
Dermot O’Brien: (Not Only) But Also is at Domo Baal, 3 John St, London WC1N 2ES, (Open Thurs- Sat 12-6pm or by appointment) – 4 September until 15 November, 2025
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Dermot O’Brien: Not Only (But Also) is at Tension Fine Art, 135 Maple Road, London SE20 8LP (open: Friday and Saturday: 11am–5pm, or by appointment) – 6 September until 11 October 2025
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