Artist Talks - Michelle Abbott and Patrick O'Donnell

In September 2025 Michelle Abbott and Patrick O'Donnell were invited by the Phoenix Spotlight organisers to give talks on their creative practice. That evening was the jumpstart to collaborating on Out of Line - a joint exhibition in Phoenix Window Gallery 8-31st May 2026.

To accompany the exhibition, Michelle and Patrick will revisit their original Spotlight talks, highlighting their inspirations, practice and crossovers.

Michelle works with threads as both a drawing and sculptural medium to challenge the material itself, and traditional concepts of painting; blurring boundaries between art and craft. Her current series’ investigate dynamics of human relationships, the history of Victorian tailors in London’s East End, and non-objective aesthetics.

Patrick works in 2 and 3 dimensions, oscillating between painting and printmaking. He is interested in the notion of transition between real and metaphorically constructed space, the boundaries and opacities of colour, line and edge, and the subsequent effects of when they meet, merge or dissolve. Recent work takes inspiration from details of his immediate environment, domestic settings, and places of personal connection, with glimpses of intersections that commonly appear in our peripheral vision now taking centre stage.

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Host or Publisher Michelle Abbott