Liz Sullivan - 'story'

Wednesday 16 November - Saturday 3 December 2022

Click here for artwork by Liz Sullivan

Liz Sullivan’s exhibition story invites the viewer to contemplate the construction of narrative and its shifting mutability over time. The notion of truth is challenged by the retelling of history, religion and mythology, and new forms of story are written. By reworking familiar imagery, sourced from the rebirth of classicism during the Renaissance, Sullivan highlights the continual revival of imagery now informed by the digital information age. Her pieces further question how future audiences might rework our current understanding of the land we live in and of the choices that we have made to protect it.

Sullivan gathers the stories and sources of interest from her travel experiences to the great museums, to local tales and the lived experience of those she knows, and of course the images she can glean from the internet. She has noted the way stories change and information comes to light that causes scholars to shift their understanding, to reclassify figures in paintings and even retitle land forms and historical sites. Similarly, she allows the working process of gathering, printing out sources and painting to take on a life of its own. In embracing changes of colour, halo effects, watermarks upon an image announcing copyright, pixels and jargon appearing almost as graffiti, Sullivan blends together her unique imagery. They are familiar for their source references but dramatically altered. There is a sense of the postmodern in her interest to include the under-drawing and structural elements with equal reverence to the over washes and paint gestures so that all can be seen together. It lends a freshness and liveliness to her works.

(Opening paragraphs of catalogue essay written by Kerrilee Ninnis)