In Disguise | Lindsey Bull

About

Lindsey Bull's third solo exhibition brings together an impressive series of delicate, small-scale paintings which address notions of disguise and transformation. Bull paints in oil on canvas to present figures that are often masked, hooded or in some way concealed. They enact undefined movements, formed from abstract, undulating rhythms of the brush stroke. These are figures that are in flux, fleetingly tangible, yet at the same time abstracted and unknowable. They rest in a perpetual state of disguise. Throughout her practice Bull explores these perceptions of reality and illusion, investigating fragmentary instances where the real merges with the fantastical. She draws upon a lexicon of imagery, from books on witchcraft and cults, to silent film stills and occult magazines, to explore a history of practices that shift the everyday into realms of spiritual, ritualistic or psychedelic perception. Space also plays an important part in Bull's paintings. Her figures are often enveloped by spaces that feel simultaneously familiar and unreal, sliding in to an abstract and undulating form that reflects the figure's alternate state of perception.