Stuart Spence

Interpreter -Peter O’Doherty

"Initially,after looking at and thinking about Stuart's blurry, dreamlike photos with their evocative titles, I thought there might be at least an album's worth in there ( and there is! ).
But in the end, the stillness of the spare images became more obvious and what was omitted from their frames seemed just as important as what was included. And so I cheated, and compressed four of the photos and their titles together. I squeezed as hard as I could to coalesce little musical droplets into one short and simple song, that, like Stuart's photos, try to convey as much as possible with as little noise as is necessary. "

Emigrating with his family from New Zealand in the late 1960’s, Peter O’Doherty is a musician and painter. For two decades he was prominent musically as bass player and contributing song writer with Sydney band Mental As Anything. In the early 1990’s he and his brother Reg Mombassa released their first album together under the moniker Dog Trumpet. Nowadays they tour spasmodically but with great enthusiasm. They released their fourth album ‘Antisocial Tendencies’ in 2007 and are currently working on a fifth album.

Exhibiting regularly as a painter over the past 18 years in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and internationally in England and New Zealand, O’Doherty has been hung in the Sulman Prize exhibition and many of his portraits have been selected for Sydney’s annual Salon Des Refuses exhibition. He has won the Paddington Art Prize for landscape, the Commendation Award at the Mosman Art Prize and the Alan Gamble Memorial Art Prize.

Peter is represented in Sydney by King Street Gallery on William. He is married to the abstract painter Susan O’Doherty. They have two children, a cat with a bell on her collar and live in Sydney.