Lizzie Gill: Paraphernalia

Lizzie Gill’s work explores themes of domesticity in a contemporary context. Her work is an uncanny look at the past – prompting one to question their sense of time and material culture. Gill’s large-scale mixed media paintings are layered investigations of found imagery and performative labor. Sourcing references from museum archives and early 20th century publications, she utilizes assemblage as a metaphor for material improvisation and escapism. Gill interjects the canon of still life painting through her process using domestic tools. Marble dust emulsion is piped onto the surface of the work, using a pâtisserie tool, creating an intricate bas-relief. Her delicate transferware vessels are archeological explorations, geographic and cultural, actual and mythical, that the artist has seen and reimagined, or imagined without having seen. Gill’s work examines the idea of ‘women in translation’ – the responsibility and complexity of generational inheritance and heirlooms passed down through matriarchy. Using the vessel as a lens to explore the concept of containment, the corporeal structure of the vase references the body, allowing the artist to investigate the female as object. Drawing upon a metahistorical context, Gill synthesizes personal, classical, allegorical and historical narratives into a refined mise en scène, reconciling one’s stewardship of these objects in a contemporary ‘place setting.’