Elizabeth Magill: Still (dark)

About

Elizabeth Magill responds to the purposefully restricted space of the 3 x 3 x 3 metre gallery space with a paired down and focused display of 3 recent works — two small paintings and one large hybrid work mounted on aluminium. 

Unified by their densely worked surfaces, the works present recurrent motifs that echo other works in the artist's oeuvre. 

The larger work, Still (dark) 2018 demonstrates Magill's interest in and embrace of different forms of image making that have given energy and vitality to the her prolific practice. Images culled from personal archives, art history and vintage photography are screenprinted before being worked over repeatedly and in different ways. Subtle details hint toward the artist's personal experience of historical events alongside appropriated imagery and art historical referencing. These works occupy an ambiguous status as paintings, combining print-making, photography & collage with paint on canvas, paper or aluminium. 

Alongside this Head 2004-18, and Corot London 2015-17, (from her 12” series), reproduce the size and format of record sleeves. The imagery she works and reworks sets into play contrasting moments of stillness with lively activity and agitation — the oblique Head either looking away or looking on, or the sprawling and spreading branches of trees against a solitary man with an orange sash reading at their feet. The exhibition title plays on the multiple meanings of the word still; not in a state of movement, remaining or continuing or a still, as in film. 

Still (dark) sees the artist boiling down her practice to focus in on some key essential current concerns in order to address the particularities of Matt's Gallery new space. The 3 x 3 x 3 cube has been designed by Director Robin Klassnik's son Tomas of the Klassnik Corporation to occupy Ron Henocq's Studio at 92 Webster Road.

Elizabeth Magill is represented by Kerlin Gallery, Dublin and Anthony Wilkinson, London.