4me4you delves back into the archives…
In this retrospective feature, 4me4you visit to Outsiders Gallery in 2013, where Irish artist Conor Harrington presented A Whole Lot of Trouble for a Little Bit of Win, a compelling body of work that blended classical painting techniques with contemporary street-art sensibilities.
Their subject matter ranged from details and compositional explorations for forthcoming paintings to abstract, ethereal portraits populated by the recurring characters that inhabit his increasingly geo-political visual narratives.
“A Whole Lot of Trouble for a Little Bit of Win is a new body of work I’ve been concentrating on over the summer. It’s based on my second big photo shoot. Two of the paintings are currently on show at the Lazarides Bedlam exhibition, I’ll have one more big piece at the Rathbone later this month and finally I’ll be having a show of drawings and studies at The Outsiders early next year.”
The title itself carries a cultural nod. Harrington credits inspiration from a track by El-P, noting that the phrase perfectly captured the sentiment underlying much of his work from that period.
The artist also acknowledged the collaborators who contributed to the project, including filmmaker Joao Retorta, alongside Alex De Souza, photographer Eoghan Brennan, and models Jaffar, Alan, Louis, and Cody.
Working with oil and spray paint on canvas, Harrington’s paintings merge the drama of classical European art with the raw immediacy of urban culture.
His figures, often caught in moments of conflict, elegance, or collapse,reflect themes of power, identity, and the tension between tradition and modernity.
