Gloriana
Liz Neal
12 September - 19 October 2003
Set against the ornamentation and theatricality of the ‘Gloriana’ era Liz Neal has installed an exhibition of cut and tailored canvas. Suffused with mass produced, abstract, patterned and erotic imagery Neal has made work culled from fashion and a culture of aspirational opulence. Hand stitching layers of canvas into a collaged sleeve, Neal has wrapped the gallery in a composite dressing of wallpaper and murals, orientated around a central remaking of one of the iconic garments of Elizabeth I. The fabric and materials unfold from the dress to the walls. Built into the tableau are stereotypical ‘innocent’ characters taken from Walt Disney that are hand stitched and painted in the same way. Conflating the notions of honesty and value, associated with ‘craft’, with flamboyance and decadence with, amongst other things, desirability; Neal further confuses them with the spectre of artificiality and falsehood found in some of the perpetually repetitious porn imagery she uses. The results are akin to something like a Baroque-style fantasy interspersed with traces and left-overs of quotidian life and flawed grandiosity.In the past Neal’s work has used subject matter to flag up a putative malevolence and banality in consumerism and advertising-saturated media. Juxtaposing low grade, disposable sensibilities with an attention to the handmade and crafted. Her work has previously been seen in Death to the Fascist Insect that Preys on the Life of the People at Anthony d’Offay and Assembly.
