Lindsey Bull

Artist statement

Most importantly, my work is an exploration around reality and illusion. In particular the sensation of a fractured reality; the paintings depict figures within, and enveloped by spaces that feel simultaneously familiar and unreal. The idea of the moment is imperative to the process of making the paintings; they have to create tension in a moment in time.

My works are often small, the size offering a dynamic, intimate relationship. Absence and fragmentation is played with, coupled with heightened areas of patterning and layers of paint. Areas of the canvas are left unpainted, others are built up over a period of time. I utilise a lexicon of imagery drawn from various sources, from books on witchcraft and cults to boxing magazines and Kung Fu journals. The figures that I choose and which interest me the most, are usually performing or engaged in some unknown ritual.

The interest in rituals and performances formed, when I was looking at boxing magazines from the 1950's and 1960's visual psychedelic experiments. During a residency in China, this research into performative behaviour deepened and expanded, in connection to rituals within Taoism and Buddhism and formed a new body of work. Consequently, mythological behaviour in connection to rites and rituals is the framework of much of my current work. It is an investigation into a language exploring the mystery of rituals.

My recent work investigates mainly occult practices and mythology. Particularly, rites and rituals used in ancient and contemporary traditions of witchcraft. The figures are often female, masked, dressed in robes, hooded and undertaking some kind of performance. They are figures caught in flux, fleetingly tangible, yet at the same time abstracted and unknowable.

I like to think of my paintings as interpreting a kind of ‘gothic psychedelia’. They are the juncture where psychedelic patterning and colours meet darker forces driven by an interest in ritualistic performances and the ‘freak out’ of the acid trip.