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In 1990 Joby participated in his first group show at the Irish cultural centre Comhaltas Ceoltoiri na Eireann. His early style has changed and developed radically. Paintings such as The Last Fish, 1996-97demonstrate just how much Hickey’s style has evolved. The Gerard Dillonesque tones, the flat two-dimensional composition and his use of schematic colour recall how much he experimented stylistically. Even in the use of media Hickey experimented using acrylic with oil on top.
In 1997 his work was accepted in the RHA Annual Exhibition, Dublin. In 1999 he was launched into the London art world with a series of group exhibitions in Islington, which were held in 2000 and 2001, and his work featured on the front of Galleries magazine. Later in 2001 his work was put in the London Art Fair. He also took part in the New York Art Fair where Tiffany's board purchased four of his paintings for their private and public collections.
The subject matter for which Hickey's work is most renown is the cityscapes and car scenes where he concentrates on portraying the lighting on cars, buildings and streets. For him this is his natural habitat as he says, "I see more cars a day than trees. I suppose that's just what I look for." In paintings such as Waiting Traffic, Waiting at the Light or Bridge Traffic Hickey explores the totality of the subjects, eliminating the artistic hyperbole. He cleverly exploits the empty spaces, and contrasts the electric light emanating from the body of cars with the natural sunlight or light of the sky. Most of Hickey’s paintings, which explore this theme, also concentrate on the subtle interaction of human beings and their environment. His paintings visually verbalise how cars, and modern day technology have interfered with human communication and our sense of community, giving a barren feeling. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the cityscape entitled Beirut.
Hickey found the city inspirational and quite beautiful. A city of a million plus inhabitants Hickey’s painting conveys a sense of life and energy, which is immediately apparent, especially in a city which survived over a decade and a half of conflict. The graphic quality of his work focuses on form and line especially apparent in the painting Joby’s Plane– objects can stand on their own independently, yet appear universal when one examines the painting in its entirety. "I rarely try to verbalize my work, as I think it has a visual language of its own."
At times looking at his work one recalls the style and themes of the American Edward Hopper. Like Hopper, Hickey’s work could be viewed like the stills for a movie or 1 / 2 tableaux in a theatrical play. Just as Hopper positions his characters carefully within a composition as if they have literally been captured before or after the climax of a scene, Hickey positions the objects, cars etc within a pictorial framework which at times could appear like the opening scenes or ending of a film. Indeed Joby was voted one of ten finalists out of 3000 short films, for his film World War Two, which featured in various festivals. He says, "I sometimes see my paintings as single shots from a film".
The increasing popularity of Hickey’s work was obvious when he was invited to participate in The Cow Parade Ireland charity auction in 2003. Ireland's first Cow Parade contained sixty-seven bovines done by Ireland’s leading artists that were seen grazing throughout Dublin. Visually it was a remarkable collection of Irish art on public display.
Joby Hickey’s cow was entitled Mad Car Disease, a symbolically thought provoking art work where he used the cow as a metaphor for the earth, with oil for milk and oil wells for horns and teeth. On one side is a night vision image of an oil field, on the other side is a radar with cars. The cow depicts a small section of the life cycle of oil, from below the ground to the cars exhaust, which surround the whole cow, all driving towards the head which is based on a petrol pump.
Joby Hickey’s influence on the Irish art world has yet to be fully realised or even comprehended; yet the way in which he echoes our pop culture is undeniable. His cinematic compositions, his dramatic use of light and dark comes further to light in his most recent work of Alexi Leonov and Gene Cernan. Alexi Leonov is probably best known for his spacewalk on March 18 1965 when he became the first human to walk in space outside of a spacecraft. He was outside the Voskhod 2 spacecraft for about 10 minutes and almost didn't get back in the door. He vented some air from his space suit so he could fit through the airlock hatch. Hickey’s representation of Leanov is incredulous. It marks an early artistic maturity. These paintings are the first in a series, which will explore this theme of space travel. For Hickey it is the ultimate isolation.
Hickey belongs to our generation who witnessed “man on the moon”. Many say it was man’s greatest achievement of our generation. As the viewer we are looking at Leanov as if from an old 1960s television scene, with the blurred lines of an untuned television.
Eugene Andrew Cernan was a former NASA astronaut who had been into space three times as co pilot of the Gemini 9A on June 1966; as a lunar module pilot of the Apollo 10 in May 1969, and as commander of the Apollo 19 in December 1972. In that final lunar landing mission, Cernan became "the last man on the moon" since he was the last to re-enter the Apollo Lunar Module during its third and final extra vehicular activity or EVA.
Again in reviewing the film footage from that time it is almost impossible to distinguish in Hickey’s representation what is in fact canvas could actually be a still from film footage. It is this dichotomy between painting and film which underlies Hickey’s representation of the world around him, and in eschewing banal cliché of overworked realism , this reamins Hickey’s recipe for success making Joby’s work accessible for
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