“O’Regan’s practice is recognised for its highly original use of found objects. For Incursions, he acquired landscape paintings as if acquiring land and staged an invasion. Found in op-shops, junkyards and recycling centres, the paintings he sought had a formulaic, mass-produced quality with predictable faux-sublime compositions and little evidence of a signature hand. The frames were sourced to suggest a particular era, a time of empires and colonial expansion. O’Regan has registered a control of his acquired land by in-painting intrusive present-day urban development: roads, concrete bridges, signs, shopping malls, service stations and more. Using the scale and perspective already established in the landscapes, his incursions into the paintings echo other, wider, human impositions on the earth.” Text by curator Meryl Ryan for the exhibition catalogue “Look closely now” Work produced for the exhibition Look closely now at Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, 2011
