DISASTERS AND INTERVENTIONS

04.12.25 - 29.03.26

Oliver Jeffers

The Naughton Gallery presents Disasters and Interventions, a new exhibition by internationally renowned artist Oliver Jeffers. This marks the first time that this collection of works – created sporadically over the past decade and a half – has been exhibited together.

Each piece involves the artist intervening in some way on a found image. Although collage has long been part of Jeffers’ approach, both the disaster paintings and the intervention works differ from traditional collage: rather than cutting up found material for its colour or specific imagery, Jeffers uses the entirety of the original scene, adding a new element that completely alters the depicted narrative.

The series began in 2011, when Jeffers retrieved a decaying landscape print from a trash can in Chinatown, New York. He brought it back to his studio and instinctively painted the first thing that came to mind to “add” to the otherwise empty setting – a bright red rocket, borrowed from his well-known picture book How to Catch a Star, crash-landed in the dirt (* A Point of Light in the Dark). After creating several more of these works – early pieces often featured half-sunk Titanics, made around 2012, the centenary of the ship’s sinking – Jeffers realised that all of his interventions depicted some form of disaster.

This ritual of finding and amending, or intervening in, old paintings and photographs became a sort of game for the artist between other projects, and soon expanded to include non-disaster interventions, such as portals to other worlds or crude, child-like drawings made to appear as though from the hands of serious men.

While the rest of the artist’s canon tends to explore larger world issues through beauty, hope, and dramatic shifts in perspective, this body of work turns to humour as a source of relief in the face of futility.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Oliver Jeffers is an artist, author, and activist whose work spans multiple disciplines and mediums, all united by a common goal: to shift perspectives and inspire constructive dialogue about our changing world. His Belfast- and Brooklyn-based practice, global in scale, seeks to reframe complex issues through accessible art and storytelling, encouraging audiences of all ages to see the world differently and consider their role in shaping its future.

Originally from Northern Ireland, Jeffers is well known for his award-winning picture books, many of which are New York Times #1 bestsellers, have been translated into 50 languages, and have sold nearly 15 million copies worldwide. Beyond his literary success, he is an internationally recognised painter and sculptor, having exhibited at galleries and museums all over the world – most recently with a solo installation, Life at Sea, at the Brooklyn Museum, New York. He is celebrated for his Dipped Painting series and his explorations of globes and constellations in projects such as For All We Know, The Moon, the Earth, and Us, and Our Place in Space – an artistic scale model of our solar system, spanning 9 miles, that puts human conflict into a cosmic perspective.

Creative endeavours aside, Jeffers’ foray into climate activism has brought him onto international platforms, including as a speaker on the Main Stage of TED, a participant at the United Nations COP26, and a speaker at the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual conference. He is also a recurring contributing writer for publications such as TIME magazine and The New York Times.

Jeffers’ work, with its distinctive simplicity, beauty, and humour, invites people to engage with big ideas, offering fresh context, hope, and a renewed sense of purpose in these rapidly shifting times.