LIZZIE HALL

After the High Fell

7 - 16 July 2023, CCAS Manuka

The other day I read about a group of Orcas attacking sailboats off the Iberian coast. Biologist Alfredo Lopez Fernandez theorised that the elder female Orca in the group had, at some point, suffered a ‘critical moment of agony’ (perhaps a collision with a boat), that had ‘flipped a behavioural switch’ which led to the attacks. The paintings in this exhibition came after a critical moment of agony in my life, and they are not like the paintings that came before them. They are not an attack, more an act of self defence; finding control in the figure, focussing on light and form, repeating the motif, restricting the palette.

Image: Lizzie Hall Pink/Red Centaur, 2022, oil on linen, 200 x 155cm, photo by Stephen Best