Conversation with Maggie O’Regan
Founder, InSitu Art Consultants Ltd
Who is the last artist who caught your eye?
The photographer Chloe Jafe who showed recently at Paris Photo with Akio Nagasawa gallery. Her series Inochi Azukemasu documents the women of the Japanese Yakuza with deep respect, sensitivity and insight.
Tell us about a woman, well-known or not, whom you admire and why.
The photography expert Zelda Cheatle, a pioneer in her field and one of the key people who helped give prominence to the medium of photography in the UK, long before the widespread recognition it enjoys today. Apart from being a well-respected curator, she is also an editor, lecturer and consultant but what I most admire is how generous Zelda is with her knowledge and the way she encourages and supports others.
Do you collect art?
Without consciously planning it, I have managed to build a collection of printmaking, drawing, painting and photography. Pieces have been acquired in various ways: swapping works when I was an art student, first in Ireland and then at Chelsea, mostly works on paper. Later, as a consultant, I acquired photography and painting, some of them gifts from the artists. One of my favourite possessions is an unsigned but original stone lithograph by Chagall, disbanded from a 1964 publication printed in Paris, which I bought for $1 in a junk shop in Massachusetts. I have a beautiful lithograph by Toko Shinoda, who is a national treasure in Japan and still making work today at 105 years old.