Lillian O'Neil: Pause before the fall

Lillian O’Neil’s third solo exhibition at The Commercial, Pause before the fall, comprises four new collages that iterate literally and through metaphorical suggestion a vision of inescapable gravitational force and mortal flow. She presents us with accumulations of image upon image of gravity’s effect upon bodies, human and non-human, and of its analogy in the realm of melancholy coupled with eroticism. The near absence of colour is expressive of the exhibition’s emotional hue, paradoxically characterised by a combination of impending threat, alienation and intimacy. Dominant tripartite and chequerboard structures are introduced in the two larger works in the exhibition, intermediate...