GAME TRAILS by Jacob O’Shannassy

Utilising materiality and abstraction, these experimental paintings mark the beginning of new processes in Jacob O’Shannassy’s practice. Through them, he aims to understand how to fabricate a tactile pathway between the real and subconscious world. 

Layering, pouring, scraping, and moulding viscous paint and medium, O’Shannassy aims to assemble these works as sensuous objects of discovery, malleability, and transformation, tapping into a pure surge of the subconscious. The role of this fluid process and tactility is not about appealing or repulsing but keeping the work in suspension, allowing a threshold to emerge and reform over time. 

In GAME TRAILS, this becomes an area where O’Shannassy can create routes in the paint to travel across and between, encountering nuances of the self, the subconscious, and the imagination.  

This exhibition is part of our 2026 Little Gallery Emerging Artist Program. 

Image: Jacob O’Shannassy, Untitled, 2026, oil paint, impasto medium, archival sealant, paper on canvas, approx 195 cm x 250cm